Deep Thoughts - Richie Castellano

Bohemian Rhapsody

2012-01-25T17:13:00.001-05:00

I'm pleased to announce that my Bohemian Rhapsody video has passed 50,000 views. That's insane! I think today I will write about my obsession with that song. Here's where it began....

FLASHBACK

In 1992 (I think) I went to the movies with my dad to see "Wayne's World." When it got to the famous car scene and Bohemian Rhapsody came on, I asked my dad, "What is this?" He said, "This is Queen." I remember listening as the song just kept adding more and more layers of awesomeness until it just erupted at the famous headbanging climax. I was sold. This was officially the best song I'd ever heard and it only took one listen of only half of it to realize that. After the song was done and 12 year old me's mind had been thoroughly blown, I turned to my father and said in a very serious tone, "Why wasn't I told about this song?!?" He was a bit alarmed by my reaction. I was actually incredibly irritated that I had to go through the first 12 years of my life without hearing the greatest song ever written. My dad and I played music together, he introduced me to Motown and The Beatles. In my very under-developed opinion he was clearly negligent in his responsibilities to me as a musical mentor and a parent by omitting this song from my listening diet. He gave me a slightly puzzled look and said "I don't know. I don't listen to this kind of music." I was flabbergasted! How could you not listen to this?!? This is the only thing I wanted to listen to from that point on. Bohemian Rhapsody was in first place and everything else started at 4th place. My dad saw that I was not satisfied by his answer. If he knew the song and he knew the band who did it, then why didn't he think to tell me about it sooner? To shut me up he said, "Ask your uncle, he likes that stuff."

I got home from the movies and called my Uncle Phil.

"Hi Uncle Phil. Do you have Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen?"

"I think so."

"Ok, I'll be right over."

I remember seeing the CD in his wall unit. Queen greatest hits. There it was on the back; "Bohemian Rhapsody." I went home and put it on my CD player. Holy shit! There's a guitar solo in this song!!! In the movie, they start the song from after the solo. To my amazement, this song was even better in it's entirety! If this was the best song I ever heard, then this was clearly the best guitar solo I ever heard. It had everything. Beautiful melody, fast runs, perfect tone! I couldn't handle how awesome it was. I listened to the song non stop. I didn't even bother to listen to any of the other songs on the CD. Then something horrible happened. I realized I was going to have to leave my house at some point and I wouldn't be able to listen to it! I got fresh batteries and put them in my cassette walkman. Then I took a 60 minute cassette tape and recorded Bohemian Rhapsody 10 times in a row on each side. I did this so I could keep listening to it without having to rewind.

I remember just walking around my block several times while listening to the song over and over picking out something new every time. The layers seemed to be endless. I never heard that many vocal tracks. I never heard that guitar sound. I never heard those chord changes. And that voice!

When I wasn't listening to Bohemian Rhapsody I was trying to play it. MTV began playing the Queen video due to Wayne's World's popularity. I remember seeing Freddie crossing his hands to grab the high notes in the piano part. I saw that and went to our upright piano and tried to imitate it. If I remember correctly I was way off. But over then next few years I kept refining it. Changing a voicing here and there.

Fast forward to high school. I think it might have been senior year. My music teacher, Lou Mannarino played us a tape of a session that he did. He was hired as a singer to record a spoof version of Bohemian Rhapsody for some commercial. All the words were changed to promote some company, but I remember hearing it and feeling like someone hit me over the side of the head with a frying pan. This is possible?!?!?!? This can be recreated?!?!? Holy shit!!! It was like he gave me the key piece of information I had been missing. And right then I realized that I would be able to do this song live....with A LOT of help.

I don't remember exactly how I did it, but I went home and began to record the opera section on my analog 16 track. If I do some digging I may be able to find the mixdown tape somewhere, but I'm pretty sure that I had a lot of wrong harmonies and I can only imagine what the piano part was like. I probably sequenced it a painstaking pace. I mixed it down to a DAT tape because CD-R technology was still incredibly cost prohibitive in those days. There was a school rock concert coming up (I'm pretty sure that Curtis High School in Staten Island was one of the first to do official school rock concerts.) I told my friends, we're going to do Bohemian Rhapsody at the concert. I got it all planned out. Andy Ascolese will play keyboard. Chris Kuffner will play bass. Brendan Pezzoli from the Jazz band will play drums, and that freshman Matt Lindauer will do the guitar parts with me. Our teacher, Lou will sing it. I've heard him do it on that commercial. He's great! When the middle part comes up, we're gonna play to this track that I recorded at home. So, at the school rock concert, we did Bohemian Rhapsody live, and I remember it felt fucking awesome!

Fast forward to college. I started a rock cover band called Hit Me With It. Right from day 1, our big song was going to be Bohemian Rhapsody. We had a great singer named Jason Spoor. We played the song with my track for a little while but it wasn't really working out. It was time to re-do it. I remember Jason coming to my dorm room at Purchase College, and he and I recording that opera section right in the room onto my computer. People on my floor thought we were nuts. Eventually they realized what we were doing and a few of the music majors passing by would stop in to check it out.

Over the next few years I played that song a lot. It ALWAYS went over. When you were losing the crowd, whip out Bohemian Rhapsody and you could save your gig. I kept toying around with the piano part here and there. It was my favorite thing to play on piano even though I only knew bits and pieces of it. A few years later, Ann Marie decided to do that song for her college recital, and we re-recorded that section yet again, this time with her singing everything.

No matter how many times I heard that song since Wayne's World, I never ever got tired of it.

Back to the present.

By this point I could play all of the piano part with the exception of the opera section. The B Bb A Bb bit was incredibly difficult for me. I realized that if I couldn't get that, I couldn't do this project. I just sat there building up the muscle memory to play that over and over. Ann Marie was ready to murder me because if you play those three chords over and over again, it's really really obnoxious. After I felt comfortable enough with the piano part, I decided to start the project. I set up a tempo map in Pro Tools. This was a pain in the ass. Queen didn't play to a click on this song. There are many parts that are Rubato. Pro Tools and Rubato don't mix well. Regardless, I had to tempo map the song out. I wouldn't be able to do it without a click.

Recording the piano took the longest by far. I did so many takes. I could have just programmed it in, but it was important to me that I actually play it this time. After the piano was done, I breathed a sigh of relief. In my mind the project was mostly done already because the thing I was dreading the most was over and done with. Luckily for me, the drum part isn't too crazy. I'm not a good drummer by any stretch of the imagination. I can play very basic things. I knew I wasn't going to be able to remember every fill like I had done with the other parts so I notated the entire drum part. Having the music right there in front of me made it a lot easier to deal with, although I think it was less about actually reading it and more about the actual act of transcribing it. That's the best way to memorize something...write it down.

The bass and guitars were a breeze. I loved doing the guitars. It was so much fun trying to get those sounds. I borrowed my friend, Chris Segalini's Vox AC-30 amp and used my little Brian May amp as a preamp and that got me really close. I even miked up that little amp for a couple of tracks.

When I got to the lead vocal I kind of hit a wall. Wait a minute...I can't sing this song. In every band I've ever been in, I've never sung this song. Sure, in the car, but not on stage. I didn't even know it I'd be able to do it at all. I hit record and did a rough take just to see if I could. I sang through the whole song and at the end of the take, my voice was completely fried. I was hoarse and in pain. I listened back, and to my surprise, I sang the whole thing! I hit all of the notes. It didn't sound great, but it was a functional take. I was satisfied with that. In my mind, I wouldn't be able to do it again without severely damaging my voice. I was very proud of the way it sounded as it was.

I showed it to Ann Marie and she told me that it could be a lot better. She said, "If you going to go crazy re-creating every single articulation in every part, then why wouldn't you treat the vocal the same way?" She had a point, but I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to sing like this much more. I took a break from the song at this point. I had no choice. I couldn't sing anymore for the rest of the day anyway. I listened back to what I did and thought, "she's right. If I can hit these notes at all, then I should go the extra step and try to match Freddie as closely as my own voice will allow." I really zeroed in on Freddie's lead vocal. It was an amazing experience. With each track that I recorded, I was peeling back the layers of this masterpiece. I was seeing the wizard behind the curtain but at no point was I ever disappointed it. Every new detail that I picked up was inspiring. Examining Freddie's lead vocal was like taking a master class in breath control and how to manage the break between chest voice and head voice.

In the end, Ann Marie was definitely right. Doing the vocal over with more attention to detail really made a huge difference. Unfortunately that also killed my voice again so I had to take another break. After that, I started to tackle the background vocals. This is another area where Freddie kicked my ass. I believe that the Queen harmony sound comes from the fact that he was able to flawlessly match his performances from take to take. Every nuance and articulation would be nearly identical from track to track. The harmonies sounded so lush and smooth as a result of his unique ability to do that. I did not have this unique ability and instead opted to keep doing it over and over until it matched. : )

By this time, my computer was ready to explode. Not only did I have a full band on there with nearly 16 guitar tracks, but I had 28 vocal tracks. I had to do pre-mix bounces of the background vocals. This was pretty cool because that's how Queen did the original. The only had 24 tracks to work with so they had to bounce. In the end it made the final mix much much easier.

The final mix was another opportunity to peel back another layer of this song. Getting the panning and effects as close as I could was an audio-geek's dream come true.

The video part was also challenging. I had Sony Vegas, which is great, but anytime you do a project with up to 12 separate videos on the screen at the same time, it can really chew up system resources on your computer. It was really hard to see what was going on while my computer was chugging along trying to keep up with everything. Although it was tough, doing the video was probably the most fun part. Video editing is a hobby of mine and it didn't feel like work.

Overall, I'm very happy with the way it came out. Oh, if you haven't checked it out, here it is:

http://youtu.be/2Iiy_YfpVn0

There are few things I wish I could change, but nothing major. My video camera has an auto focus that constantly blurs out on me and I was forced to use some of those blurry shots at points. Also, some of the sync is slightly off as a result of my computer not being able to keep up during the video editing. Other than those minor issues, I'm very happy with it. It was a fun project that I was considering for a long time and it made me remember why I fell in love with this band in the first place.

-Richie

I've been a bad blogger

2011-11-16T01:36:00.001-05:00

It's been way to long since I've written anything here. Here's what's going on:

I'm doing lots of gigs with BOC. Fortunately, our busy season got extended a bit, which is totally fine by me.

I'm still working on the MorningStarlett album. It's hard to coordinate everyone's schedules, but I think I can safely say that as of next week, all of the instruments will be done and all that will by left to do is vocals.... and maybe some extra added effects here and there.

After that I'm scheduled to mix the bad mouth Bettie's cd which will be equally awesome.

I've been getting a lot of studio work and that has been a welcome challenge for me. The work has been diverse and fun.

I'm starting to get the itch to do some more tiger's fang, but I promised myself that I would complete a few legit music projects before returning to my hobby of making over-produced, under-watched you tube movies.

In terms of gear, I got some exciting things coming up. I have a secret guitar in the works, and I'm looking forward to sharing info about it when it's completed. I also just finished the process of retro-fying my rickenbacker 12 string. I'm looking forward to recording with that. I've also been using a Music Man Steve Morse Y2d model on some of my gigs. I bought this guitar because it was purple, but I ended up really liking it. It's nothing like the axis. It has 5 very different sounds and the output is lower which causes the guitar to clean up a lot easier.

On a non musical note, I was invited to beta test star wars: the old republic. I Liked it a lot, but I was expecting a bit more with all the hype this game has received. I will still be playing it at launch and I'm sure I'll have loads to write about once we start playing.

-Richie

New Song!

2011-07-08T15:08:00.000-04:00

I just posted a new song and video on Youtube. The song is called Shazam, and is performed by Danny Miranda, Jules Radino and me. This is basically a more fleshed out version of a demo song I did for Peavey's Revalver. We recorded this a couple of months ago, but I wasn't able to mix it until now, because I had a flood in my studio. If I get enough hits on this song, that might persuade us to record some more songs like this.

Check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWzU0Il4wyA

-Richie

It's OK to dance to live music

2011-05-22T17:19:00.000-04:00

I've been observing the audiences at various gigs. Not only audiences at shows I play, but also the audiences at shows that I go see. I'm not talking about concerts, but club dates (weddings, bar mitzvahs) and bar gigs. After a couple years of observing, something has become clear to me. This current generation only dances to pre-recorded music. Believe me, this isn't a blog intended to slag DJs. I have friends who are DJs, and they're very talented and good at what they do. I just think it's conditioning from childhood that has caused this problem.

It first dawned on me when I was doing a gig at a club. We just played a Michael Jackson dance song, and I thought we did a pretty good job of it. People were into it. They watched intently, and then applauded loudly at the end. We then took our between-set break, and the DJ took over. The DJ played Michael Jackson. All of the sudden everyone started dancing. Huh?!? Ok, maybe we just had an off night or maybe the sound wasn't great. But then I saw it happen at a Wedding. A fantastic wedding band was playing. I was very impressed by how great they were. No one danced to them. As soon as the DJ comes on people start dancing. What's going on here?

A lot of people I have spoken to about this subject say it's the bass. The DJs can pump the bass more than a band. But this is not necessarily true. In fact most bands bring way more PA gear than DJs, and on top of that some of these bands are using kick drum triggers and synth bass to get that same low end response. So, I ruled that out. It's not a sonic thing. And since I thought the band was really great, I ruled out talent being the issue.

So why do kids only dance to pre-recorded music? Well, I think there are a couple of reasons.

First, parents find ways to pacify kids with TV. Cartoons in particular are very pattern heavy. In many cartoons, the same exact thing happens every day. It almost becomes ritualistic. Drive something into a kid's head enough times, it becomes hard to break the pattern. (Disclaimer: I know nothing about psychology, but this just seems kind of obvious to me.) The connection with live music is that a lot of kids get so used to hearing a song a certain way, that they can't accept a different version, no matter how good it may be.

Second. I don't think kids are exposed to live music as much as they should be. Nowadays, every kids party has a DJ or an ipod going. It's not that kids aren't interested in live music. (Put a set of drums in front of any kid, and you'll pique their interest.) It's just that they don't see enough of it.

Third, Dance clubs don't have bands anymore. I realize that nowadays you MUST have a DJ at a club, but that further reinforces the fact that DJs are for dancing, and bands are not.

So what's my point? Next time you see a band and they're good, feel free to shake it! If you're a parent show your kids some live music. It's good for em!

Metalheads Unite!

2011-03-23T01:02:00.001-04:00

So I'm at the pharmacy today. As I go to the checkout counter there's a young man (probably in his early 20s) behind the cash register. As I step up in line, he notices my Van Halen t-shirt and says to me, "Van Halen is not cool." So I reply, "Oh yeah?" He says, "No they're not cool, but at least they're not as bad as Dragonforce." I didn't feel the need to get into a musical debate at the checkout counter, so I just smiled and got my change. As I was walking out, I thought what would prompt someone to say something like that out of the blue? Then it hit me. This guy is obviously passionate about heavy metal. When he's not wearing his blue apron with the white name-tag, he probably sports a variety of black t-shirts with detailed illustrations of dragons, demons, skulls, and the name of some obscure metal band that only plays in Sweden written on top to look like the words are bleeding. He saw me with a metal t-shirt (or hard rock...whatever) and thought, "Hey there's a guy who likes metal! I want to share my enthusiasm with him. What's the best way to do that? I know! I'll tell him the band he likes sucks!"

My point is not that metal fans are argumentative morons. My point is that there's a large group of people who are passionate about hard rock and heavy metal, and instead of banding together, they spend most of the time bickering. I can't tell you how many times I've heard students tell me they can't form a band with their friends because they don't like the same type of metal. "Well, I like power metal, but the singer likes death metal, and the drummer only plays hardcore." I hear this sort of thing over and over. Instead of refusing to cross sub-sub-genres (that's not a typo), why don't you just start a fucking metal band?

I went to see Iron Maiden at Madison Square Garden, and you know what? It was a sold out show! They've never had a hit song, they never get played on MTV, and I almost never hear them on the radio, but right in front of me we're 20,000 heavy metal fans! There is an army of metal fans out there, but they're so determined to argue with each other that it makes the genre of heavy metal seem so small when compared to pop or r&b. Aren't you tired of hearing auto-tuned garbage everywhere? We should unite and show people that we are a huge community of people that appreciate real bands with real singers and good musicianship.

Do I think a simple blog post will change people's thinking? No. But just imagine how things would be if it did.

gigs...recordings....movies....Oh my!

2011-03-10T02:11:00.001-05:00

I have a bunch of local NY stuff coming up. I haven't done a Staten Island gig since the Spinal Tap tribute on Halloween. I'm looking forward to the next few months.

On Wednesday, March 16th, I'm playing at the Full Cup on Van Duzer Street in Staten Island with Baby Johnson. Baby Johnson is the band I play with at the Red Lion in Manhattan. The best way I could describe a Baby Johnson gig is: "A party band where anything goes." Hopefully the Staten Island people will be crazier than the Manhattan people. We'll see! The show starts at 8 PM and they're promoting as a pre-St Patty's day bash. The band for that show will be Russ Jones, Andy Ascolese and Vinny Cimino.

Next on the list is Epic and Triumphant return of MorningStarlett. On Wednesday, April 13th at 10 PM, we will be playing the Trash Bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. MorningStarlett is actually in the process of recording an album. We began production in January and things sound really great so far.

After that I have a trio gig booked at Uncle Bourbon's In Staten Island on Bay Street. This will take place on Thursday, April 21. This show will feature and Danny Miranda (of Queen, and Meatloaf) and Andy Ascolese. We're gonna do a lot of guitar based stuff, so if you like shredding, this is the show to go to. I may also sneak in a few originals as well.

I'm trying to get my music online. I made a Last.fm account, but I'm learning it takes some time before it shows up in the radio stream. If anyone is into Last.fm and has any of my stuff on their music playing device, do me a favor and give it a scrobble!

Aside from all of the gigs and recording projects, I'm also knee deep in Tiger's Fang! We're gonna have a release party in late April. Details To Be Announced!

-Richie

ebay

2011-01-29T09:27:00.001-05:00

I've been selling some stuff on ebay. It's been a mostly positive experience. I have been noticing that their policies are extremely slanted towards the buyers though. I understand the need for buyer protection, but isn't it just as scary to be in the seller's position? People scam ebay all the time. It's real leap of on the seller's part to send something out in the mail without having the cash first. The problem is that Paypal always sides with the buyer. When you send an item out, a buyer send a payment to paypal, but paypal holds that payment for a short period of time before adding it to your account. All the buyer has to do is say they never got it. This seems like too big of a security flaw to ignore on paypal's part. They need to figure out a new way to verify this. Maybe work with UPS or Fedex to confirm delivery and the contents of a package? Actually that would solve everything. Here's my proposal:

1. On your ebay sale demand that buyers must agree to "double verified shipping" for an additional cost to be paid to the shipping company.

2. When someone buys your item on ebay, they send their money to paypal who holds the money. Once paypal has the money, you can ship the item.

3. Go to a shipping company store like Fedex or UPS. Present them with ebay item number or even a barcode to scan off your phone.

4. They enter this item number into a computer and then verify that the item you're shipping out is the item on the ebay auction (serial numbers will be important here if they're available.)

5. Once they click verify, the shipping labels automatically print out. This ensures that the item will be shipped to the location the seller has indicated in the transaction.

6. Once the item's tracking number is confirmed as being delivered, the seller gets the money.

Now, of course there are times when sellers send broken items or stuff that doesn't exactly match up with the descriptions. When this happens the buyer must continue the double verification process and mail the item back to the seller. When the package is confirmed as being delivered back to the seller, then (and only then) will the buyer get a refund.

That's one idea I have. The next one, I'm borrowing from Steve Corn.

Sniping is a big problem on ebay if you ask me. It hurts everybody. If you're at work or on plane when an auction is ending, you can pretty much forget it (unless you enter a million dollars as your bid.) People wait until the last minute to start bidding in the hopes that no one else will bid. I think the reason people put stuff on ebay auctions is to encourage bidding. Sniping hurts sellers who are looking for an honest auction, and it hurts buyers who can't be there at the last 2 minutes of an auction. Here's the idea to fix this:

All initial bids will be closed 1 hour before the auction ends. Only re-bidding (or adding a higher bid) will be allowed in that last hour. This means that if something has been up for a week, and you want it, you have to put a bid on it right there and then. You can still wait until the last second to adjust your bid, but you will only be able to do this if you've already put a bid in prior to one hour before the auction ends. That will effectively kill sniping and help sellers get a fair deal.

There you go. 2 ideas that will improve the ebay sellers experience

The Big NAMM Blog

2011-01-16T23:58:00.001-05:00

Here it is. The Big NAMM Blog. Here are some thoughts, impressions and other kinds of brain spew.

After leaving the NAMM show, the one thing I keep thinking was, "Man, I wish I had cool hair!" This year, more than ever, the NAMM show was taken over by the Hollywood rock scene. Sure, this means there were some great musicians floating around from various LA bands, but on the whole it meant that the show was flooded with tattooed autograph seekers with dyed black hair, facial metal, black leather, and in some cases brightly colored contact lenses and/or kiss makeup. Don't get me wrong, I think the look is cool, and I don't mind seeing women walking around with corsets so tight that their chests become boob-shelves, but in the end it was circus that obscured what NAMM is really about. Most of the people I saw were obsessed with celebrity to the point where it was disruptive.

(WARNING: "BACK IN MY DAY" MOMENT.)

When I first started attending NAMM in 1993. It was a very different show. The companies brought everything they had, and they all had booths on the main floor. There was live music everywhere. On a given day on the convention floor, you could see Frank Gambale, Joe Pass, Jeff Berlin, and Steve Morse just jamming at different booths. Autograph lines were short. Everything was hands on. Now it's a very different show, and the spirit of NAMM has really changed. Autograph lines wrap around booths several times. They have to put people there to direct traffic around these huge lines. The biggest lines are always for the 80s bands. The sad result of all of these autograph seekers attending the shows is that these great 80's musicians like Steve Vai, Eddie Van Halen, and Ritchie Sambora can't go to the NAMM show because it would cause too much chaos.

Another big difference is the actual content of the booths. Many companies only bring a small sampling of what they have, and most of that is behind glass cases or tied down so you can't use it (because the punters might steal something.) What they do have is a big flat screen with a "What's New" presentation. I guess in the end it gets the job done, but it's not as much fun.

The layout has also changed a lot. Now many companies are pulling their displays off the main floor and moving them to rooms in other areas of the convention center, or in some cases, out of the convention center completely. Every year, I also feel like fewer companies show up to NAMM. I would have loved to try out some Native Instruments stuff this year, but they weren't here.

I don't want to give the wrong impression here. NAMM was great. It was just really tough to accomplish anything on Friday and Saturday when the convention center was raided by celebrity hunters and Criss Angel lookalikes.

Now, onto the meat and potatoes....GEAR!!!!

I saw more cool stuff on Sunday than I saw Thursday, Friday & Saturday combined! Overall, there weren't any huge innovations, just little tweaks here and there. The biggest trends I saw were: Gear that can receive settings from the web, iPad music apps, new guitars that look beatup, looping, better sample libraries, big things in small packages, and things being overpriced.

Let's start with the overpriced thing. Not all companies, but many companies think that their products are like water in the desert. A tele-style guitar shouldn't be $25,000. That's ridiculous. A sample library shouldn't be $2,500. A control surface, with no audio passing through it, shouldn't be $5,000. A stomp box shouldn't be $500. These companies are nuts, and dlusional. I could get an original Fender tele from the 60s or 70s for less than 25k. I could hire musicians for a lot less than the 2.5k they're asking for a sample library. In general I think it's out of hand. Especially given the fact that people don't have that kind of money to spend these days.

The iPad thing was crazy this year. Everyone wants to do music on their iGadgets. Some iPad apps were cool. The ability to remotely control your mixer is very handy. I think passing audio through the iPad is not the greatest idea. Sure, it's a fun thing to do as a gimmick, but it's not really practical yet. Although to be honest, if they came out of with any kind of audio app for Android, I would buy it immediately, no matter how crappy it sounded. I think the iPad will be great for notation and remote control.

TC Electronic makes stomp boxes that can connect to the web. You can download your favorite guitar player's settings and upload them into your pedal and use those settings on your gig later. Music Man made a pickup system called "the game changer." It allows you to connect your guitar to a computer and choose any kind of pickup configuration your could dream of and store it to any switch on the guitar. For example. I have a country gig tonight, so I setup up my pickup selector to have all single coil sounds and some thinned out, out of phase sounds. Then I go to my gig, and that wiring is stored to my guitar. No need for the computer. The next night I have a metal gig, so I can put everything back to standard humbucking sounds. I think there's also a way to program it from the guitar, without the computer, but it seemed a lot easier to do it from the computer.

A lot of companies are following the Fender bandwagon and making distressed looking guitars. I played the Eric Clapton Les Paul model which is beat up to match his original. I liked it. ESP has guitars that look like their 50 years old which is funny, since ESP formed in the 80s. Gretsch is also making a George Harrison duo jet that is all beat up.

I saw some very impressive sample libraries. I will be buying the Big Fish Audio Epic Orchestra plug in. It sounds like the Lord of the Rings soundtrack and will work very well for the MorningStarlett album that I'm currently working on. Vienna Instruments was awesome as usual. Overall, the quality of these samples keeps getting better, but as a result, the prices and the gigabytes keep getting higher.

Everyone is looping now. Most effects companies make looper pedals. I got to see a bunch of very talented people using them, and they do some pretty incredible stuff. It has gone beyond just playing a few chords and then soloing over them. I saw a Japanese girl named Naoryu perform a J-pop song by herself with a few loopers and sounded like a professionally produced pop song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBbeNHP4bN0. I'm inspired to get one of these loop stations. I'd love to incorporate this into my gigs.

My favorite products at the show were: The Electroharmonix 44 caliber, The SM V-Machine, The Eventide Harmony Pedal, and The Peavey graphite acoustic travel guitar. Of course I also loved everything at the TC, Engl, Dimarzio, and Music Man booths, but I always talk about that stuff.

The Electroharmonix 44 caliber is a 44 watt solid state guitar power amp that fits in the size of a very small stomp box. It's smaller than a boss pedal. It's really loud, and actually sounds quite good. I heard it drive a 4x12 cabinet and I thought it sounded great. I definitely want a couple of those. A pair of those and a pocket pod in my gig bag could be the perfect backup amp in case of emergency.

The Peavey graphite acoustic was very fun to play. They make a standard size version, but I was drawn to the travel size guitar. It had a unique design and it sounded very good electrically which would be perfect for me. It was pretty cool.

Eventide had some great pedals. I really like the harmony pedal. It does all the effects that I use, but in one very small pedal. It's not as flexible as the Nova System, but it's so small that it would be a cool thing to get one day. It has 4 part harmonizing in about 20 different scales in all keys with delay and modulation effects added. It sounded great.

Finally, the SM V-Machine blew my mind. It was the size of a Nintendo DS-Max. But you could load all your VST plugins on it and use it as a MIDI module. It was pretty cheap too. I definitely want to get one to use with BOC. I hope it's not too good to be true!

So there's my big NAMM report. I got see a lot of gear, and I was lucky enough to catch some great performances.

In closing, all I can say is, "I wish I had cool hair."

-Richie

guitar effects

2010-12-27T18:36:00.001-05:00

I just learned something. Well, I guess I kinda knew it already, but I never really tried it. For years I've been approaching guitar effects like a guitar player and studio effects like an engineer. If you're using a simple setup with one amp and a couple of pedals, then this doesn't really apply. However, if you're using a monster rig (or an asshole rig as I like to call to the rig I use) then this is the way to go.

I was watching a Steve Morse video today and he was talking about his setup. He has a dry amp and a wet amp. This seemed silly to me at first. Like there's really a big difference? And more importantly, who wants to bring 2 amps everywhere?

Well, maybe the practicality of having a dual rig like this is questionable, but the concept makes sense. Here's when this became obvious to me.

I was doing a gig last week and I kicked on my lead sound. Here's a little under the hood description of what that means.

1. I press a button on my MIDI controller

2. The MIDI controller simultaneously sends out messages to my effects processor and my amp.

3. The amp switches to channel 3, kicks in the midboost button, the secondary master volume, and the noise gate.

4. The effects processor switches to my lead preset which is: my sound -->Chorus--->delay--->amp

5. Then the expression pedal controls the wet/dry mix of each effect.

This is how I've been doing it for years. However, at this last gig I noticed something that I've been subconsciously doing for all that time. When I blend in the effects, the overall volume gets lower, so I've been going to the volume pedal and increasing the overall volume to compensate. This constant tap dance has become very annoying. By the time I get it right, the solo is almost over, and instead of using that time to play something good, I was tinkenering with levels! At this last gig in particular, I couldn't get the lead sound to be loud enough with the effects on, so I played dry all night. I had the rack of doom behind me and it was pretty much bypassed all night. The effects were burying the guitar tone, and I just got tired of dealing with it. Well, that's not going to happen anymore.

Today I went back into the presets that I probably programmed 5 years ago, and I changed them radically. Like I said before, I'm not going to start carrying two amps with me, but I did use the Steve Morse concept today. I configured everything in parallel. Basically, I have straight path from my guitar sound to the speakers at all times (unless doing something drastic like whammy or wah.) On separate paths (you can do this in most advanced processors, or you can do this with complex wiring) I ran my effects. The mix was 100%. The output volume was set to OFF. Then I assigned my expression pedal to control the output volume of each effect and VOILA! No more subtracting volume! Only adding volume! So now when I blend in the effects, my guitar tone stays un-touched. I can't wait to play my next gig and try it out.

If you're a strictly analog stomp box person and you want to try this concept out, here's how you do it:

First, you need 2 amps. You'll also need a volume pedal (or 3) and a mono splitter or Y cable (depending on your setup, you may need multiple splits.)

Plug your guitar straight into the amp. Or you can plug it into your wah and distortion first if that's where you're getting your basic tone. Anyway, get your basic guitar sound happening. No delay, reverb, or modulation effects should go in this path.

Once your basic sound is to your liking run a cable out of your amps effects send.

Things to consider:

Some amps terminate at the effects send until you send the signal back through the effects return. If this is the case, you'll need a mono Y cable/adapter. Plug the Y cable into the send. On one end of the Y, go back to the return. This should complete the loop and make your amp happy. We'll discuss the other end in a bit.

Some amps don't have effects loops. I call these Caveman amps. Most people like to call them vintage amps. (come on people, it's almost 2011. Get effects loops!) This can be problematic for a setup like this, but it's not impossible. The problem is that we want your tone in all it's glory to be duplicated through the wet amp. An effects loops takes your guitar sound after the amp's gain and tone controls (the preamp) and sends it somewhere else. If we can't do this, then we can't exactly duplicate this tone. It's not the end of the world. It's just that your wet amp may have a different tonal characteristic than the dry amp. This may or may not be a good thing depending on your taste. If your old amp (that you paid thousands for...ok, I'll stop now) doesn't have an effects loop then just put the Y cable out of the last pedal you would plug into your amp. So if you have a wah and distortion, take the output of the distortion and split it. Send one end of the Y to your amp and like I said above we'll discuss the other end in a bit.

Now you should have your basic sound all tweaked out. That sound should be going through the speakers of amp A and it should be going through a cable that you haven't plugged into anything yet. Next, you're going to take the cable (the effects send cable, or the cable from the Y split) and run it through the rest of your pedals. You're going to want to tweak the pedals out. It may be beneficial to run these in parallel as well, but that will become a major pain in the ass because it will require more Y cables which can make things messy and noisy. For the sake of simplicity, let's just say you have one delay pedal. (if anyone's interested in the multiple effects parallel setup, I can do that in another post)

Plug this dangling cable that you have into your delay pedal. Run the mix (or effects level as some pedals call it) at 100% on. We want this to be all delay and no original sound. Take the output of that pedal and run it into a volume pedal. Take the output of the volume pedal and plug it into the effects return of amp B. If amp B doesn't have an effects return, then just plug it into the front input. If you need help with this step, ask your neighbor, Barney Rubble, to come over and help you.

Now your all set up. When your raise the volume pedal you will add delay through amp B. This will preserve your initial tone and only add delay through a separate source. It's pretty cool and I think it sounds great.

guitar ---> wah ---->distortion----> amp A

amp A effects send ----> delay ----->volume pedal---->amp B effects return

You can also technically do this sort of additive setup with one amp, but it would still require you to blend the wet and dry sound before going into the amp which could get messy sounding.

-Richie

I assure you, we're working on it.

2010-12-13T03:01:00.001-05:00

Some news for Tiger's Fang Fans

We're definitely opportunists here at Tiger's Fang Productions. It's been more than a year since Tiger's Fang 6, but that doesn't mean we've been taking a break. We've been working on this non stop since March. So what's taking so long?

When you're trying to make an ambitious amateur film (or any other project you can think of) and you have a budget of $0, you become an opportunist. When someone is willing to give you something for free, or do you a huge favor, you need to take advantage of that on their time. You don't get to choose when you will get these opportunities, you just take them as they come. We've been fortunate enough to have several great people donate their time, services, gear and facilities to us. Like I said, when the opportunities come, you can't wait too long or they will most likely go away. We started working on Tiger's Fang 7, but then an opportunity came up to shoot in an amazing location that would work great for episode 10. So before we even finished 7, we shoot half of 10. Then another great location become available to us, but for a very limited time. We need that location for parts 7,8 and 9. So, we do a marathon week of shooting every night and get it all done. Last week I just finished the video editing on Tiger's Fang 7, but we have super-duper top-secret special guests who are only able to shoot next week, so as I'm editing Tiger's Fang 7, I'm prepping for next week's shoot of scenes that will be in Tiger's Fang 10.

It's a big mess. We're working on 4 movies at once. My computer has so many files on it that I'm starting to lose track. Aside from all the chaos of doing 4 movies at once, I also had to get knee surgery smack in the middle of shooting which complicated things a whole lot.

Each one of these 4 movies is more ambitious than any of the previous 6 we've done. In fact, Steve and I spent today trying to figure out how we're going to achieve certain effects, we did green screen tests, watched countless tutorials, and even messed around with 3D animation. I feel very fortunate to know Rudy Sarzo, and Jon Rodgers. Aside from being fantastic musicians they're both video experts. I was calling and e-mailing them both today and picking their brains. As crazy and as stressful as it gets, it's always fun to learn how to do new stuff. That's the most rewarding part of doing these movies. They force you to develop new skills. I encourage everybody to do some youtube stuff. It's fun and you learn new skills, and at the end of the day all of the skills are related.

Here's what you can expect in the coming installments.

Bigger, Better, and Longer Fight Sequences
Amazing Special Guests
Increased Production Value
Mind Blowing Special Effects
New Costumes
Incredible Locations (seriously, you won't believe this)
Tons of New Music
The same old crappy dubbed dialog
More Subtle Continuity Errors
NUDITY!!! (well...maybe)

After next week, we will officially wrap production on Tiger's Fang 7, 8, 9, and 10. I seriously need to stop shooting for a while and start working on the post production. The only thing that would make me want to keep shooting footage is if we got an all expenses paid trip to the Shaolin Temple, and complete access and permission to shoot wherever we want. Other than that, I think it's safe to say that post production officially begins next week.

This isn't the end of the Tiger's Fang Series. I predict we will need to make 17 to 20 episodes to tell the whole story of what happens to the iron master and his daughter. I have the entire story written down. The climax is incredibly ambitious and I only hope that by the time we start to shoot those scenes, we will have developed the skills necessary to make them look amazing.

Once 7-10 is all finished, we'll have a release party. I'll give details on that later.

-Richie

Thanksgiving Eve

2010-11-24T16:51:00.001-05:00

Ah yes...Thanksgiving Eve. The biggest bar night of the year. Almost everyone is off from work on Thursday, so they let loose on Wednesday night and party hard. Obviously, bar/club owners also LOVE Thanksgiving eve. This is probably their busiest and most profitable night of the year. For bands, Thanksgiving eve was also a great night to play because you would get Holiday pay which is usually considerably more than what you would normally get.

Now, notice how I phrased that sentence about the bands in the past tense? That's because the days of Thanksgiving Eve being an awesome gig night are coming to an end. Yes ladies and gentlemen, strap yourselves in for another rant on getting paid to play gigs!!!!

Why does one open a bar/club/restaurant? (we'll just call it a bar for the rest of this post.) The answer is simple. To make money...a lot of money. No one goes into the bar business if they think they're going to make a little money. Yet some bars come and go quickly while others seem like they've been around forever. This is because the bar business is a high risk business. With the markup that bars charge on food and alcohol, they could potentially make a seriously large amount of profit. However, if you have no customers, you will quickly lose your ass and go out of business. This is the nature of a high risk business. Excellent profit potential, and moderate probability of failure.

We know that reasons why people like to go bars, but let's look at some of the reasons why people DON'T like to go to certain bars:

Location

Prices

Selection

Cover Charge

Service

Atmosphere

Entertainment

Size

Demographic

So there you have it. If a bar sucks, people won't want to go there. As a bar owner it's important to make sure that all of the elements listed above will appeal to your desired customers.

Now to make my point. I turned down thanksgiving gigs this year because they weren't offering holiday pay. I have nothing against any musician who does a holiday gig for regular pay, but I try to avoid doing that because I don't feel it's fair. So now bar owners don't feel the need to cut the band in on the most lucrative night of the year. As abhorrent as that is, that's still not the point of this post. I've heard from friends that bar owner's are expecting bands to take a pay cut if they're not satisfied with the customer turnout on Thanksgiving eve.

Wait...WHAT?!?

So, not only are you not paying them what you should, but you want them to make less than a normal gig in the event that your place isn't able to attract customers? This is insane, and more importantly it's wrong. Here's why:

The bar owner stands to make a staggering amount of money on thanksgiving eve. They have agreed to pay you a reduced rate to play on the busiest night of the year. That should be the end of story, but by them asking you to take a pay cut if the turnout is less than ideal is the same exact thing as them asking you to incur all the risk for their bar. The bar owner would never ask any of his staff to take a pay cut, but as a musician they now feel that you are responsible for their risk. This is totally ridiculous and it's completely wrong. If you enter a high risk venture, you don't get to pawn off the risk onto someone else. That takes the risk out of it. It's not like they're saying, "if we have a great night, we'll give you double pay." They're saying, "if we have a great night, I win. If we have a bad night, you lose."

This is an unfair business practice and it needs to stop now. See the list I wrote above? The one that says Location, Prices, Selection, etc...? It is the bar owner's responsibility to choose these elements to create his bar. The band is only a small fraction of the total picture. Why do they take the brunt of the loss? If they buy beer and nobody drinks it, do they call up their suppliers and ask for a refund? And on top of that, you can be sure that they don't pay their staff less on a bad night.

One analogy I can think of is a casino. You go to a casino to make money. It's high risk. Your chances of losing are very high, but you can potentially make a lot of money. If you go to a blackjack table and lose all your money, do you ask the dealer to share the loss with you? Of course you don't. Do you ask the Pit boss for a refund because you didn't know you were going to lose so much money? No!

As a band, it is not your responsibility to incur the bar owners risks. You are a service that he is hiring to entertain his customers. If the night turns out badly it falls on him. He can then choose not to hire you again, but he may NOT ask you to take a pay reduction. You should make that clear when you book gigs. As it is, local gigs don't really pay that much. This new practice is turning gigging into a gamble. If I'm gonna go out and bust my ass all night, I shouldn't have to gamble on getting paid. People are supposed to get paid for work that they do.

Bar owners, if you don't like handling the risks involved with owning a bar, then you should go into another line of work. Maybe retail, an office job, or even McDonald's. If every night was a winner then I'd open my own bar and do my own gigs there.

One more point I'd like to make, and then I'll shut up. A DJ would not deal with this sort of thing. I'm not going to say if a DJ is better than a band or whatever. I'm not going there. My point is that bar owners generally don't pull this stuff on DJs. They do it to bands because they think that we love playing so much that we don't mind lugging our gear around, getting treated badly and not being paid for it. This needs to stop. I feel like I'm going to have to start renting out spaces and putting on my own shows just so I don't have to deal with this.

-Ricihe

I paid $65 for this?

2010-11-07T01:46:00.000-04:00

Why are video games 65 dollars now? They aren't way better than they were when they cost $50. In fact, I'd say apart from graphics and physics improvements, the games are pretty much the same. So why this price hike? Why are video games 65 dollars when people have far less disposable income these days? I tried gamefly, but I had to ditch it. I'm not a hardcore, 5+ hours a night gamer, so it usually takes me 2 or 3 months to finish a game. The problem with gamefly was that it was 17 bucks a month and I would keep each game for 3 months. So that comes out to $51 per game. Not really a great deal when you think of it. So now, I usually wait until a game becomes old, used, or DLC priced before I buy it.

There are exceptions. Force Unleashed 2 just came out, and I had to have it, So, I paid the $65 bucks. At first, it was amazing. I was having a blast. Then it was over. I try to savor games and make them last by only playing a little bit at a time, but there was no getting around this. This game was ridiculously short.

Aside from the length, there were some other glaring problems.

1. There are 4 levels in this game. They'll tell you there are 6, but that's nonsense. There's a Dagobah level where there is no action, only cutscenes, so I don't count that. Then, they commit what I consider to be one of the cardinal sins of video game design. They reuse maps. You begin the game in Kamino, and you end the game in Kamino. I therefore refuse to count that as another level, so there you have it. 4 levels.

2. Glitches. A $65 game should have no glitches. The camera in this game would get stuck during in game dialog sections. You and Darth Vader are crossing swords and screaming at each other amidst an epic battle and all you see his the corner of your shoulder. Or even better, the camera gets stuck inside Vader's helmet where you can see through the actual computer model.

3. Repetitiveness. Killing stormtroopers is fun. They act unpredictably and that makes things funny. All the other guys you fight do the same attacks every time. You kill them with the same tactics, and the finishing move is the same every time.

4. Control Problems. Although they fixed most of the big problems from the first game. Jumping is still a problem. I personally think the LucasArts Jedi double jump method should be retired. We never see a Jedi kick off the air in the films, yet this is the way LucasArts has handled force jump for the last 15 years.

So in closing. I paid $65 for a game that is broken, short, and unfinished. It feels like they rushed this one out for a quick buck. The Lucas people have once again successfully conned me out of my money.

May The Force Be With You

-Richie

That 25 song iPod shuffle thing

2010-10-24T12:01:00.001-04:00

I put my droid on shuffle and this is what came up:

Flight of Icarus - Maiden

Fuck You - Cee Lo

Jungle Love - Morris Day

Fire and Rain - James Taylor

Bad Company - Bad Co

Honey I'm Home - Shania Twain

Sunglasses - Badmouth Betties

Feel Your Love Tonight - VH

The Trooper - Maiden

Jukebox Hero - Foreigner

Perpetual Change - Yes

Get Up Offa That Thing - James Brown

Can I Play With Madness - Maiden

Top Of The World - VH

Life In The Fastlane - Eagles

Bring Me To Life - Evanescence

Perfect Strangers - Deep Purple

Rowboat - Ron Thal

Jump - VH

Joining A Fan Club - Jellyfish

Good Company - Queen

What About Love - Heart

At This Moment - Billy Vera

Hit Me Baby One More Time - Britney Spears

Don't Be Stupid - Shania Twain

I think my droid likes Maiden!

-Richie

Halloween

2010-10-08T16:11:00.000-04:00

Every year I get all dressed up for Halloween and never have anywhere to go. I'm putting an end to this!

This year, Comic Book Jones and I are hosting the greatest Halloween party ever. Now I don't have all the details yet, but I can say this: The party is on Halloween, October 31st. The party will be held at Comic Book Jones (the greatest comic book shop in the multiverse.) There will be a costume contest, so come in costume, and the evening's entertainment will be provided by.....

SPINAL PAP

David St Hubbins (Andy Ascolese)
Derek Smalls (Russ Jones)
Joe Mama Besser (Damian Scro)
Viv Savage (Ray Magnuski)
Nigel Tufnel (me*)

Yes, we are playing all Spinal Tap songs, and Yes, we will be in costume.

performing with Spinal Pap are special guests MorningStarlett (featuring Ann Marie Nacchio)

This is going to be a lot of fun. If you haven't seen the movie "This is Spinal Tap," then you have 3 weeks left to watch it and realize why this will be the greatest Halloween party ever.

*depending on BOC's schedule, which as of now is completely open for the halloween weekend.

Internet Goodness

2010-09-14T15:50:00.000-04:00

I posted a video of a project I did for fun:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmExtL-UOKM

It's me doing ABC by the Jackson 5. The response has been extremely positive and I really need to thank my family and friends for checking it out, commenting on it, and speading the word! This is really cool.

The overwhelming reaction to this video has given me a nudge to get the rest of my online stuff happening. I've updated my website, gave my twitter page a facelift and I completely overhauled my youtube channel and the myspace page. In fact, there are 10 songs up there on the myspace page right now that are free to listen to.

http://www.myspace.com/richiecastellano

Some of these songs are from CDs that I've previously recorded, but there is one brand new song called Floating Away. There is a clip of this song on DiMarzio,com on the page for the Crusier Neck Pickup. I've received e-mails asking about this song, so here it is!

I hope you get to check out the songs.

Thanks,

-Richie

On your feet or on your knee

2010-09-05T08:05:00.001-04:00

I'm having a bit of a knee issue this week so I can't run around on stage. If you come to any of the shows this week and see me limping around, this is why. But don't worry; to compensate for this, I will be playing more notes.

Love,
-Richie

Michael McDonald

2010-08-14T01:23:00.001-04:00

So I'm obsessed with Michael McDonald. Here's how it happened....

I've always been vaguely aware of Michael McDonald, that guy with the woofy sounding voice. About 10 years ago, I was flipping through the channels when I came across a comedy special by Tommy Davidson. He did a great Michael McDonald impression in his act. It was funny, and it was spot on. Here's a clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lonC3qKlguM

So after seeing this bit, I would laugh everytime I heard Michael McDonald on the radio. I would try to do my own imitation, which was usually terrible. After a while I started getting more familiar with the songs. I wanted desparately do be able to do my own Michael McDonald impression. I went out and bought the Doobie Bros. greatest hits and learned all his songs. I even went as far as to record my own version of "What a fool Believes." During that recording I realized something. Singing like Michael McDonald is freakin hard! Know why? It's because Michael McDonald is unbelievably awesome. What started as a joke turned into something completely different. I became a Michael McDonald fan. All I do is listen to the Michael McDonald station on Pandora. I do Michael McDonald at gigs, and I try to sing all songs in the style of Michael McDonald.

Here's a related side story. I was hanging out with the crew during the set-up at a BOC gig. A well-respected pro audio manufacturer had just installed a brand new state of the art system at that particular venue, so their reps were there checking it out. On this particular day, I did the entire line-check with our Front of House sound engineer, Woody. I went through all the instruments and all the mikes doing, you guessed it...Michael McDonald. After the line check was done, the audio reps approached me saying that they were supplying the touring gear for Michael McDonald, and they'd be interested hiring me to set Michael's vocal microphone at his gigs! I don't know if they were serious, but it makes a good story!

So there it is. Michael McDonald, is not silly, he's incredible. Everything he does is awesome, and I worship the ground he walks on and the microphones he spits in.

-Richie

McCartney story

2010-07-15T09:38:00.000-04:00

A guy named David Elkins went through the trouble of making a wikipedia page about me. It's very cool and he was very thorough in his research. He even put in something about me meeting Paul McCartney in high school. This bit of trivia was even displayed on the main wikipedia page yesterday.

On the wikipedia page this McCartney story is boiled down to about 2 lines. I figured this would be a good time to elaborate.

During my senior year of high school, 1998, my school music teacher, Lou Mannarino, got us tickets to see Paul McCartney perform on the Oprah Winfrey show. This was a huge thrill for us. We were all Beatles fans, and that spring we were putting on a Curtis High School symphony concert at Lincoln Center where the finale was to be "Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End" from Abbey Road.

The Oprah show started and Sir Paul performed one of his latest songs live with help from himelf on accompanying video screens. On one screen he was playing bass, and on the other, drums while he played guitar and sang live. It was pretty freakin' cool. There was also the interview where he discussed the new album, and a bunch of other stuff. On the first commercial break, the screeners came through the audience to screen the questions audience members were going to ask Paul on the air. When they came to our row, we said that we wanted to ask Paul to play with us at Lincoln Center. The screener said something like, "absolutely not."

We were a little dissapointed, but that wasn't going to stop us. On the next commercial break me, and a girl whose name I can't remember right now, stood up and screamed in Unison, "Paul, will you play with us at our high school symphony concert at Lincoln Center?" He gave us this very playful shrug and replied with an enthusiastic, "Sure!" We went fucking nuts.

Now understand something, we just put the biggest rock star in the world on the spot, and he was cool as a cucumber. Although we got a verbal confirmation, some of us were still skeptical as to whether or not Paul actually intended to show up. He couldn't exactly say No in a room full of die hard fans. After the show, a reporter from the Daily News came up to us and said something like, "I saw the whole thing! I'm writing an article about this concert!" Now we were really going nuts. Not only did Paul McCartney agree to play with us, but there would be recorded proof in the Daily News confirming it.

The next few weeks were crazy. The news stations came down to our school. On my sister's wedding day, I had to do a tv interview before the ceremony! It was a frenzy. This was a very exciting time for all of us, but unfortunately there is a downside to this story.

Sadly, Paul's wife Linda passed away a few months later, and understandably, he was unable to perform at our concert. The show did go on, but without Paul. Instead, some of the students sang Paul's parts. I was lucky enough to be one of those students. I got to sing Golden Slumbers at Lincoln Center. It was really cool.

I remember we were really tight-lipped about what Beatles songs we were doing. It was a big secret. I convinced my uncle to come to the concert, and I remember begging my grandparents to come. It was a really difficult task to get Marion and Phil Castellano to close the music store and leave Brooklyn for evening, but after relentless begging on my part, they agreed to come. So when we went into Golden Slumbers, one of my fondest memories was looking out at my family and seeing their faces light up as they realized what songs we were about to play. My grandmother passed away a few years after that, and I'm so grateful to have that happy memory of her in that moment.

So there's my whole Paul McCartney story. I got to have a very short conversation with my hero, but I never got to play with him. Maybe one day......

Stuff

2010-07-05T01:27:00.001-04:00

Happy Independence Day! We just played a ribfest in Illinois. It was a good show. Half our gear didn't make it on the plane with us, but luckily we had enough to get the job done.

I think we've come to a point where air travel is completely screwed. So far we've had to deal with delayed flights, canceled flights, excessive charges, and missing luggage on many, many occasions. It's like they're in the business of bad business. I know everyone who has to travel for a living complains about air travel, but this summer is the worst yet. The just screw with people, and lie to cover their tracks. It's like they all go to training seminars on how to lie and the semantics of wording things to avoid liability.

Even though the travel is rough, it is nice to be playing. BOC is a great bunch of guys and even when stranded in an airport, we can make each other laugh. One plus to spending a lot of time on planes is that you get to devote a nice chunk of time to reading/iPod. I've been catching up on Lost. I just got to season 4. While it's no Battlestar Galactica, it certainly is entertaining and it gets you hooked pretty quickly. I especially enjoy the dialogue of the character Sawyer. That's some really funny stuff.

I've also been reading more comics lately. There's a really great comic shop near me called Comic Book Jones. I really like the atmosphere there and the people who work there are great. Anyway, I'm really into DC stuff, especially Batman. I'm currently reading the Return of Bruce Wayne, which is just awesome. I can't wait for the next issue. As cool as the Batman movies are, they never seem to nail the Bruce Wayne character like the comics. Hopefully, we'll get to see more of Bruce Wayne, the Tactical Mastermind/Genius Detective in the next movie.

For a while I kept the comics thing to myself, but then I began to realize that a lot people are reading these things. This weekend alone, I met 5 middle aged men with families and real jobs (including a physics professor) who are avid comics readers. It's like a secret society. We need a password and a handshake.

One thing I'm not happy about in the world of DC is this new Wonder Woman crap. This is supposed to segue into a movie where they ignore a 70 year legacy of the most famous Super Heroine ever. Don't they realize that people hate when they do this? If you're wondering what the heck I'm talking about then let me backtrack. They're giving wonder woman a new costume and a new persona. Supposedly, this idea came from the heads of Warner Brothers in an attempt to modernize her and make her movie ready. Sorry guys, but I think all of us want to see the classic armor and not a leather body suit. Unbelievable.

Aside from the books, I've also checking out some of the old Superman radio shows. Whenever we do ground travel, I usually travel with our Tour Manager. I downloaded these shows to pass the time. They're actually really good. It's total cheese, but in a good way. The organist on these shows is awesome. The guy is playing his ass off. A funny thing about these radio shows is that they left the original Public Service Announcements intact. It's amazing how different things were before everything had to be Politically Correct. It's like no one can laugh at themselves anymore.

Back to serious stuff. I've made some changes to my BOC gear. I'm using ENGL stuff now. It's really heavy. Right now I just have the preamp but eventually, I hope to go totally ENGL. I also picked up a really cool piece from Voodoo Lab called the Control Switcher. It has 4 jacks that you connect to the footswitch jacks on your guitar amp. Then you can pick any combination and save it as a preset which can be changed via the MIDI jack! For example, my ENGL preamp has the following footswitch functions. 1) Clean/Dirty, 2) Gain Boost, 3) Mid Boost. I plug each of these jacks into the Control Switcher which is connected Via MIDI to my TC Nova System Effects Pedal. When I hit preset 1 on the pedal it switches my amp to Clean, with no boosts. Preset 1 is a Chorus/Long Delay which I use for songs like "Harvest Moon" and "Shooting Shark." So by hitting that one button on the pedal, is switches my effects and the amp. When I hit preset 2, it switches the amp to Dirty, with no boosts. Preset 2 is dry, but I have effects that I can add as I'm playing. My Nova is setup so I can turn effects on and off within presets like stomp boxes. I have a slap delay that I use for the Vigil, the Burnin' For You Flanger, and the Rudy-Medley Chorus all ready to go when I need them. Preset 3 switches the amp to Dirty with all the boosts. That preset also pulls up a Medium Delay. I have other effects in that preset as well. There's a chorus, and a C Major harmonizer there for the extremely rare occasion that I'd have to play Burnin for You by myself.

The coolest thing is that I also programmed this rig to work with rental gear. We've been using it with the Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifiers and it works like a champ. The only difference in the effects setup is that I add a little EQ to preset 3 to make the tone a little less buzzy which is an inherent characteristic of those amps.

Aside from all of the BOC gigs, I'm also in the middle of filming the next 2 tiger's fang movies. I really didn't want to start filming during the BOC busy season, but a limited time opportunity to shoot in a really cool location just opened up and I had to do it while it was available. It's just really crazy right now because I'm also in the middle of moving, so I have a lot of things going on. We still have more stuff to shoot too. I probably wont be able to start the post production on this one until we're settled in the new place, so in all honesty, I'd probably say I can have it out by November. I know all the people who helped us with these movies is dying to see them, but all I can say is, be patient guys. It'll be worth the wait. So far it's completely awesome and is on a totally different level from the others. The production value keeps getting better, but with that comes more work for me. The first tiger's fang movie was a silly thing we did on a whim. It took me a couple of hours to make. Now they are elaborate productions that take weeks of planning, and months of post production which includes me and Steve Corn spending hours staring at a computer screen. I have to say the biggest difference in this one is the amount of great people we have working on it. Everyone is so charismatic about it. When you have a bunch of people all working toward the same goal, it's amazing what you can do.

I've also mapped out the rest of the Tiger's Fang films. To be honest, we've already shot footage for Tiger's Fang 7, 8, 9 and 10! 7 and 8 are mostly done. We have about half of 9, and a quarter of 10. And I plan to do a few more after 10 so stay tuned!

One final note. As soon as BOC busy season is over, I'm looking forward to getting back to my local stuff. Hopefully, I'll be able to do the Painter's jam more often, and I also really want to record something with MorningStarlett.

Thanks,

-Richie

Why it takes 21 hours to get from St. Louis to New York.

2010-06-02T14:25:00.000-04:00

I feel it's my duty to inform people of the way American Airlines conducts business. Basically they lie as much as possible until they're caught, at that point they make up a new lie to cover up the first one. Finally when the truth comes out, you almost always discover that they lie to save money and basically don't care about totally screwing their customers. Luckily, there was one AA employee who told it to us straight.

Remember the Jet Blue flight where they made the passengers sit on the runway for 9 hours? Well, since then the Federal Government passed a law stating that if a plane sits on the runway for more than 3 hours, the airline will be fined $25,000 per passenger. That's a potential fine of $1 million for a flight. No one has been fined yet since the law was passed. American Airlines' method of avoiding this fine is rather shady.

If air traffic control says there's congestion at the airport to which you are flying, they'll simply cancel the flight. If there is congestion at the arrival location, then there's a very small possibility that the plane could be on the runway for more than 3 hours. So rather than get their stuff together, they just avoid doing their jobs altogether. For them it's financially sound because they don't have any risk on their part, but they never have an acceptable contingency plan for the passengers they are stranding. Case in point is what happened to us yesterday.

At 9 am after being informed our flight was canceled, we were told that all other New York flights were sold out. Our best option was to fly to Washington DC, rent cars, and drive home. Of course the DC flight was delayed so by the time we got to Washington National airport it was Midnight. After returning the rental car at Newark, I got home at 6:15 am.

I think that treating customers like this is unacceptable and something needs to be done about unethical ways in which Airlines conduct their business.

Video Games vs. Art Critics

2010-04-22T03:50:00.001-04:00

Roger Ebert, a film critic who I respect, said that video games aren't art. OK, of course he's entitled to his opinion...so are you and I. I've actually heard quite a few people argue this point.

To put it as eloquently and articulately as possible...this is a load of shit. This argument should be resolved by simple fact that it takes just as many (if not more) skilled artists to make the average video game than it does to make the average movie.

Star Wars: The Old Republic video game has more actors than any of the star wars movies. So I don't understand what these people are arguing?

On any given major video game there are graphic artists, animators, actors, motion capture performers, composers, script writers, musicians, composers, engineers, producers, concept artists etc... So I'm supposed to believe that these great artists are not creating art on video game projects?

I think that interactivity is on the horizon for art, and a lot of people (especially film directors) are going to have a hard time handing the reins over to the audience. I can relate, I don't know how I would feel about someone changing my songs from the way I want them to be.

Maybe I experience games differently than other people. I stop to look out windows, I never skip cutscenes, I look at textures, walk around objects so I can hear them pan around in surround sound, watch how my shadow bounces off objects... I don't understand how these components can all be art, but cease to be art once they are put together.

I've had the pleasure of working on a few video games. There are definitely talented artists working at the game companies and to say that what they're doing is not art just seems wrong to me.

What do you think?

Booking gigs is hard work.

2010-04-10T18:59:00.001-04:00

For the first 16 years of my musical life, I booked almost all the gigs. I wasn't good at it. I never got many great paying gigs, and I was very easily bullied by shady club owners. I dreaded the process of constant phone calls, meetings, making press kits...remaking press kits, etc... In the end all that hard work was rewarded with getting crummy gigs for low pay. But, at least we were working.

When I started doing club dates and playing with BOC, I was very thankful that someone else was booking the gigs. When I went back to booking my own gigs I found it even more difficult. I lost some of my nerve/business sense, and had to build it up again. What made things even more difficult was that there were more bands and fewer venues.

My point is this: Booking gigs sucks and it's really hard. It takes patience, persistence, and it means developing relationships with some people who do everything they possibly can to NOT pay you. So after you do all this work, what do you get? You get to hear every member of your band complain to you. Why are we starting so late? Why are we starting so early? Really, 3 sets? Is this all you're paying me? Why won't this place give us free drinks? I don't want to play at this place anymore, why don't you book us somewhere else? Why do we have to bring people? Why can't my girlfriend get in for free? And on and on.

Now that I'm in a position where musician friends of mine are putting me on their gigs, I always make sure to say thank you. Thank you for booking this gig and putting me on it.

Believe me, after weeks or months of going back and forth with club owners the last things someone wants to hear is you complain about the gig they just busted their ass to get you.

So the moral of the story is: If a musician friend of yours gets you a gig, say thanks.

-Richie

PS: if you don't start saying thanks, your gig booking musician friend will stop calling you for gigs, book solo acoustic gigs for himself and be happier, he doesn't care who you play with, stop being a dick.

Japan Day 10

2010-03-09T22:12:00.001-05:00

This is the day we left Japan. Since our flight was in the evening, Ann Marie and I went to Asakusa before we had to check out of the hotel. We visited the outdoor market stalls right near the train station. This was interesting to check out, but once again, I was disappointed to see the same stuff here that I'd seen everywhere else. This market was a massive tourist trap.

On the whole, I loved our Japan trip. We got to experience so many amazing things. I felt like I was finally getting the hang of Tokyo just as we had to leave. I guess I'll have to save that knowledge for next time. The people were mostly very friendly and helpful to tourists.

I really enjoyed the Japanese language. Even though I only knew a few phrases, I got around with no problems, and speaking the language was a lot of fun.

Since the exchange rate was so crappy, it was easy to spend money very quickly if you weren't careful.

My biggest regret is that we didn't get to see Mount Fuji. Ann Marie was particularly disappointed by this. Unfortunately, the weather just wasn't clear enough for a Fuji trip. It was also really expensive to visit Fuji and quite a time commitment, so to go through all the trouble of getting there just to not see the mountain and get rained on all day would have sucked.

If I had to do it again, I'd probably take more day trips, and spend a little less time in Tokyo. I loved Tokyo, but Kyoto was just so beautiful that it's hard to top.

-Richie

Japan Day 9

2010-03-09T22:10:00.001-05:00

Ann Marie and I went on another trip, just the 2 of us. First we stopped at a sword museum/store. We saw some blades that were 700 years old and looked like they were made yesterday.

After that, we took a train to Kamakura which is about an hour south of Tokyo. Kamakura was like a miniature version of Kyoto, although our first stop was anything but miniature. The Daibutsu is a gigantic Buddha statue the appears to dwarf the surrounding trees. The sight of it is so awesome that it's impossible to describe. Religion seems to be a big part of Japanese life. Every Shinto shrine or Buddhist temple we visited had plenty of people around praying and making offerings. Their religion is closely tied into nature so every place of worship is a breathtaking sight.

Along the main roads we saw a few gift shops. I was most disappointed by the gift shops in Japan. Every gift shop has the same exact stuff for more or less the same price. The chopsticks set you bought outside a shrine in Kyoto was identical to the one on the 5th floor of a Tokyo electronics complex.

Next we visited the Hase Kannon Shrine. This was small, but great. There we thousands of tiny statues (of Kannon I'm guessing) placed precisely around the area. In fact, we were there while a maintenance staff was carefully cleaning and placing the statues. No matter where I went in Japan, I almost always saw someone cleaning. It explains why the country is so clean. The people are on top of it.

Since the shrine was high up, we got a really nice view of the falcons flying closely above. They were huge and beautiful birds.

The shrine also had it's own cave. It was my first time ever in a cave. It was cool. I felt like Indiana Jones. The cave had more statues placed all over on the inside.

We made our way back to Tokyo and had another dinner at Fukisushi. Once again, it was awesome. I learned that the chef was a guitar player so we talked shop for a bit. I also learned that Sushi is finger food, and is actually meant to be eaten with fingers instead of chopsticks.

After dinner we met up with the Samurai class translator, Kimi and her friend, Yumi, and we all went to a live show in Shimbuya. Our sword instructors were joined by dancers and musicians on stage. It was a nice fusion of traditional Asian music and modern music. It was sort of like performance art, but not exactly. The theme of the show was marionette puppets, and it followed a fairly traditional Japanese story line. Narrating the story was a girl playing piano and singing. Once again, I was absolutely floored by the Japanese musicianship. This girl was a fantastic piano player, and had an amazing voice. She didn't make a single mistake during 2 hours of straight playing and singing...oh yeah, I forgot to mention...she also did fight choreography and was awesome at that too. The show had everything you could possibly want. It was truly a multimedia experience.

-Richie

Japan Day 8

2010-03-09T22:05:00.001-05:00

We had a feeling that we missed stuff in Akihabara, so we went back. Unfortunately, we didn't miss anything, and just found more of the same stuff.

Then we went off to what was possibly the highlight of our trip. I signed us up for a class with Tetsuro Shimaguchi. He was a fight choreographer for Kill Bill. He also played the character Miki, who was one of the crazy 88 gang. We didn't know what to expect from this class. We were assuming it was going to be a watered down activity made easy for tourists. Luckily, we were the only ones in the class. Mr. Shimaguchi's translator, Kimi, asked us if we had any Martial Arts training. We told him we all studied Kung Fu. He was very pleased with this, because this meant he was going to be able to cover more ground in the allotted period of time. The stances were all similar to Kung Fu so we picked them up quickly. Once he saw this, he started throwing more stuff at us. He was a great teacher, and a charismatic entertainer. It was challenging, but we were having a great time. He definitely kicked our asses a bit. This class was a mixture of real Katana technique and movie fighting. This was like a Tiger's Fang training seminar. In the middle of the class the translator suddenly stopped. She said, "excuse me, Mr. Shimaguchi has never taught this before in this class, so I'm trying to think of the translation for what he is saying." We felt really honored that he was going out of his way to throw in extra stuff to the class just for us.

Next, he and his assistant did a short performance for us. The most impressive thing is that they were able to quickly rattle off a few moves verbally before hand and then execute them with no problem. Their performance was INSANE! I had to keep telling myself, "this is real. There are no camera tricks, edits, or tape speed changes. These guys are this good."

After the performance he taught us choreography for our own fight scenes. He all took turns fighting with his assistant. The choreography was amazing. We used everything he taught us during the class. I've done fight choreography before. The biggest difference here is that my partner was skilled stunt guy, and a master swordsman. He led the fight like it was a dance. His sword guided my sword. He made all of us look good. He was amazing.

At that point, we were all comfortable enough with Mr. Shimaguchi to show him some clips of Tiger's Fang. I think he genuinely liked it, and was laughing at our gags. He posed for pictures with us and invited us to a live performance he was doing the next evening. When we walked out of that room, we were all on on cloud 9.

Our next stop was Mandrake (man-der-ah-kay) in Shibuya. It's probably the largest Manga store in Tokyo. I didn't buy anything, because it was all in Japanese. I did get to hear some awesome Metal band on the radio in the store. I asked one of the clerks who they were and he gave me a small scrap of paper that said, "Abingdon, JAP." When I get home, I'll have to make sense of this message and get this band's music.

We grabbed lunch at a tiny family run restaurant. The food was good, but really greasy. After all the walking, we were just happy to be sitting down.

For dinner, we wanted to go to Fukizushi again, but it was closed on Sundays. Ann Marie and I went out to have a really nice dinner for two in Roppongi at a place called Wan. It was on the 6th floor of a TGI Fridays building. The place was fusion restaurant. It was a combination of Japanese, Chinese, and Italian. There were private booths closed of by Shoji screens and you sat on the floor on Tatami mats while you ate. The food was awesome, the service was great, and it was cheap. I can't give this place a high enough recommendation if you're planning on visiting Tokyo.

After dinner we met up with Steve and went to Kento's. This is a club that plays rock n roll music from about 1956 to 1964. The house band and the audience are dressed in 50's garb. This band was also slammin'! These guys were playing and singing the shit out of these songs and the audience was doing choreographed dance moves in unison. It was a total trip! Ann Marie and I joined the fun and started dancing. The regulars looked at us, started giggling, and then started mimicking our dance moves. It was so much fun. The band went into Johnny B. Goode, and I was singing along, every word at the top of my lungs. The band leader, gestured for me to come to the foot of the stage. I went there, and he turned his mike around and let me sing a chorus. Luckily for me, it was in a good key, so I sang it pretty darn good if I don't say so myself.

I filled out a request form wih a few songs and wrote my name down as Richie from New York. During the next set, the band leader pointed at me and said "Hey Richie...New York!" Then he spoke in Japanese and the audience started laughing. After that, he played "Great Balls of Fire" which was on my request sheet. They ended the night with one of my favorite songs ever, "Long Tall Sally."

The perfect ending to an awesome day.

-Richie

Japan Day 7

2010-03-09T21:57:00.000-05:00

Ever watch Ninja Warrior on the G4 channel? It's actually a Japanese show called Sazuke. There's an obstacle course requiring various feats of strength and dexterity. Contestants have to run through obstacles, balance over pits of water, and lift their enitre body weight on their fingers...crazy stuff like that. Today we went to an indoor amusement park in Odaiba. Odaiba is the city in the Tokyo bay so we got to take a monorail there. The place was called "Muscle Park." In one corner of the place was an area dedicated to Sasuke. Unfortunately for me, they had 4 obstacles relying heavily on forearms and upper body strength. Although I was hoping to try some of the balance or speed obstacles, I still tried anyway.

Ann Marie went first, and she was awesome. She nailed the airbike. She had to hang off these handles that were actually pedals attached to a bicycle mechanism that was on a rope track. Pedaling with you hands makes to bike move across the rope. She did this with no problem.

Next the cliff hanger. There's a narrow ledge with room enough for only your finger tips and your supposed to carry your body weight across this ledge. This was really hard, and Ann Marie didn't get far on this.

Then there was the Salmon Ladder which was like a pull-up bar from hell. You have to do a pull up and sort of bounce the bar up a ladder without putting your legs down. This was also really hard, and Ann Marie couldn't make it past the first step.

Finally there was the Ring Rail. You hang on to these metal rings and slide them across rings with various steps up and down. Ann Marie did pretty good on this too.

Steve was up next. He almost made it through Airbike before falling at the very end, then had the same luck as Ann Marie and the next 3 obstacles.

Next was my turn. I lifted my feet up and started pedaling the airbike. I thought "hey this isn't so bad, I can do this!" Then I got a shooting pain in my back and fell off. I sucked total ass on the next 2 and managed to get to the first incline on the rings before falling to my foamy doom. Even though, I gave a less than stellar performance, I still had a great time trying.

After that we went to SEGA Joypolis which is a collection of crappy games, long lines, and high prices. I would not recommend this place to anyone, even though there seemed to be plenty of kids there.

Ann Marie broke off to do some shopping in the Odaiba mall, and Scro went to do his own thing, so Steve and I walked down to the Toyota Megaweb which was nothing more than a Toyota showroom with a few simulators. In other words...crap fest.

After a quick stop at the hotel we went to Shibuya. Shibuya at night looks like Times Square. There are giant video billboards, and bright lights filled up by a sea of people. There are arcades, gift shops, clothing stores, malls, restaurants, and more. The place was on fire, even though it was raining out.

After the stroll through Shibuya we went to Shinjuku. Shinjuku is also a crazy place. It's similar to Shibuya until you enter the devil horned gates of Kabukicho which is Tokyo's largest red light district. This was a pretty seedy place. There were guys everywhere pedaling sex. Kabukicho was safe enough to walk through, but I doubt it stays safe once you follow one of these guys indoors. Since Ann Marie was with us, everyone left us alone. The buildings had large posters on them with pictures of young, attractive Japanese girls. We quickly learned that only Japanese men were allowed to go into these places. I guess it's hard to complain about discrimination if you're patronizing an illegal Yakuza run business in a foreign country. There were other massage parlors and such that seemed to be foreigner friendly. We also got to walk through the area of short stay Love Hotels. These aren't brothels, just gaudy hotels with hourly rates for people who want to get it on with some privacy... or for drunk dudes who missed the last train.

After Shinjuku we searched for Karaoke. One of the travel books recommended a place called Smash Hits. It was in the middle of nowhere, and the place was dead. We headed to Roppongi to try the next place on the list called Big Echo. In Tokyo it seems that Karaoke with private rooms are more popular than in places with stages, so we went into Big Echo and got our own room. This was good cheap fun. The food and drinks were good, and they had nearly every song we were looking for.

After singing our butts off, we called it a night.

-Richie

Japan Day 6

2010-03-09T21:52:00.000-05:00

Ann Marie and I decided to break off from the group today. We got lucky with the weather today. It was sunny, and not too cold. In fact, I wore a T-shirt all day without getting chilly. We went to the very famous Meiji Shrine near Shibuya. It was massive and amazing. The woods leading up to the shrine consisted of thousands of trees donated from around the world. The shrine itself was very impressive and apparently a popular wedding spot since we saw 3 different wedding parties.

Next we went to Takeshita street in Harajuku. This is the place to be if you're a teenager. They were out in full force in some of the craziest outfits you've ever seen. Takeshita street is lined with clothing shops. I wanted to buy something, but a Japanese size large is about an American size small. Even though I didn't buy anything, I did have a nice time walking through this area. I also noticed that Michael Jackson was everywhere. Every store had MJ t-shirts, videos, posters, and music playing. It looks like Japan took his passing pretty hard.

After Harajuku, we made a quick stop in the Shibuya music store district where a played a bunch of sweet Ernie Ball guitars.

Later, we met up with Scro and Steve and went to the most famous concert arena in Japan...BUDOKAN. You may know Budokan from the various live albums recorded there from Cheap Trick and Deep Purple. Here's a little trivia: The Beatles were the first band to play at Budokan.

Budokan is a massive building. It has a great look to it. It's not just some huge rectangular space in which to cram a bunch of people. It definitely looks Japanese, and has a great design. When we arrived at Budokan, there were thousands of young kids everywhere. A Japanese boy band was playing there. However, that was not our destination. Budokan literally translates to Martial Arts Hall. While the teenyboppers were rocking out to their J-Pop in the main arena, all the way in the back and down a few flights of stairs there were 2 modest sized rooms separated by a hallway in between them, where a group of badasses were beating the living shit out of each other.

I went up to one of the security guards who was busy herding kids into the right entrances and said, "Sumimasen, Kendo wa doko des ka?" He looked at me like I was from Mars. I repeated the phrase, except this time making a sword motion, and he said, "Ah! Kendooooooo." Apparently, Kendo has a long "o" (ō) at the end, and I've been pronouncing it wrong for a long time. He looked around to see if any of his co-workers were near, but there was no help in sight. In true Japanese fashion, he went out of his way to help us. He abandoned his post, and walked us through the crowds all the way to a rear entrance. We thanked him profusely, and went up to the security guard guarding the rear entrance. This time I said, "Sumimasen, Kendō wa des ka?" He said something I couldn't understand, and then motioned for us to go into the rear entrance. There was another guard inside. I forgot how to say "I would like to watch Kendo," so instead I said "Kendō, kudasai." (Kendo please) and made the I'd like to watch gesture. He also went out of his way, walked us to the place and showed us where to sit.

From where we sat, we were able to see both Kendo and Judo practice. Kendo was in front of us, Judo behind us. At first the Kendo students were doing response drills with bokken (heavy wooden swords.) They would do the moves without actually hitting each other. They took a short break in which one of the students went up to Steve and let him hold his sword. (damn, 2 for 2!) After a little while, they all put on the armor and picked up Shinai (lighter bamboo swords) and started hitting each other with full contact and full force. It was amazing to see this kind of intensity. The guys and ladies were screaming at each other like they wanted blood. I liked to think that they were all stuck in cubicles all day, and by night these guys put on armor, pretend the opponent is their boss and wail on 'em.

After class was over we headed to Roppongi which was probably my favorite area in Tokyo. This had the food and the music. What I wasn't expecting was the high pressure street team. There were a group of guys (mostly non-Japanese) saying tittybar to everyone who walked by. Some of the guys wouldn't take no for an answer. Scro adopted a policy of yelling "NO!" every time someone came near us. That seemed to work for the most part.

My travel book recommended a sushi place called Fukizushi, so we stopped in for a quick bite. This sushi redeemed our previous negative sushi experience. It was incredible. This place was all about the freshness of the ingredients. They didn't have rolls with 3 different kinds of fish, avocado, mayo etc... These guys gave you fish, and rice. They put the soy sauce and the wasabi on for you. These guys weren't fucking around, everything I had there was amazing. The chefs were also extremely friendly, and conversed with us in english throughout the entire meal. It was a little pricey, but I guess you get what you pay for when it comes to raw fish.

Next, we walked down the street to Tokyo's own cavern club! The Beatest, the Japanese Beatles were playing and they were incredible. There were 4 of them up there with right instruments, dressed in grey Beatles suits. These guys were amazing. Sure, the thick Japanese accents were funny on Beatles lyrics, but they were so good, that I honestly stopped noticing that they were singing Godda Geddu Inta My Rife, and Gorden Srumbas. They didn't make a single mistake. They were scary good and did stuff from every album. On each table in the club were request sheets with the enitre catalog printed on them, suggesting that they literally knew every Beatles song. Seeing as how good they were, I wouldn't doubt it. They even did an extended jam in While my Guitar Gently Weeps. The George guy played a really tasty Clapton-esque solo that fit perfectly. All of us had a great time at the Cavern Club.

-Richie

Japan Day 5

2010-03-09T21:39:00.001-05:00

After being wiped out from the previous night's train debacle, we decided to leave Kyoto at a leisurely pace. We reached Tokyo station in the afternoon. Our hotel was fantastic, in a central location, directly across from a train station.

It was getting dark by the time we went out. We went to Akihabara, the electronics district. It should really be called the electronics/porn/anime district. It was overwhelming. Bright lights everywhere you turn, cramped stores packed with every action figure imaginable, j-pop, and American top 40 blasting on the radios, and sales people yelling in the most nasal tone you've ever heard come from a human.

A big striking difference between Kyoto and Tokyo is the people. The Kyoto people dress conservatively and speak in quiet tones. Tokyo people (13 to 25 year olds in particular) dress wildly and shout everything. The current style for women in Tokyo is knee high boots, black sheer tights, shorts or a skirt that barely covers the business. I couldn't really tell what shirts they had on because they were all wearing short jackets. The hair is light red, long, curly and teased. They had a lot of makeup on, making some look like porcelain dolls, and others look like hookers.

Another huge trend I saw was this little bo peep thing. I saw hundreds of girls dressed like these little bo peep. They were dressed like dolls head to toe.

The guys wear their hair like Japanese comic book (manga) characters, and they dress really well. I also saw my fair share of guys dressed like 50s greasers.

Manga is everywhere and everyone reads it. I saw everyone from kids to adults reading the comics on trains with intense focus. On the trains people either read manga, or text on their cell phones. Their phones are a little longer than ours and everyone has ornaments hanging off their phones from little strings. No one takes calls on the trains. It's understood that talking on your cell phone on the train is rude.

Everything here is clean and effective. I think things just make sense and work well, although there is one thing that as an American, I just don't get. About 1 in every 5 people wears a face mask. It seems prudent to want to prevent the spread of germs, but when people sneeze or cough here, they don't cover their mouths. As an American that can be very off putting.

Anyway, back to the trip.

After a while, you need a break from looking at PS3 games and power rangers, so we went into a shop that had 4 floors of porn and sex stuff. They literally has every part of the body in latex form for sale. I bought a boob shaped stress ball to commemorate the experience.

We took a break for some food at a small dumpling shop. The food was good and cheap, which was welcome change after paying through nose for every meal.

Next we walked into a 5 floor SEGA arcade. They had rows of linked fighting games. I played some Virtua Fighter which was fun. The games are linked to the other games in the arcade, and the Internet, which makes for an interesting competitive experience. They're also into unconventional controllers here. Gigantic joysticks, motion simulators, wands etc... If a game has a weird control scheme, they'll play it, no matter how crappy the game is.

Ann Marie and I also tried one of the many photo booths. You match the pose on the screen and the computer identifies your faces and then applies cosmetic alterations. The computer smoothed out our skin, made our lips brighter and gave us big black anime eyes. The creepy thing is that it looked real, not like amateur photo shop, but it looked like we actually had big eyes and were wearing makeup. I was tempted to take a promo photo in there and save it for the day when I decide to make a glam album.

Another thing worth mentioning is the Japanese love of heat. Every building, and train in Japan has the heat cranked way up. Add that to the temperamental weather we had, and it gets frustrating to find the right balance of layers. I noticed a lot of Japanese people wearing heavy winter coats on the train when it was like a sauna in there.

After Akihabara we went to a Sushi restaurant by the hotel and it was pretty terrible. The fish wasn't fresh and the sushi was prepared sloppily. This made me worry, that perhaps Japanese sushi wasn't better than American sushi.

The food in general is not exactly what I expected. Sure, there are sushi shops and noodle shops, but almost everything else I saw on the street was fried fish guts. In fact, I've seen the word "guts" on many Japanese menus. Remember that scene in temple of doom where they're eating at the banquet at pancot palace? When Americans see that scene, we go eeewww. When Japanese see that scene they go MMMMmmmmm.

We were pretty exhausted, so we turned in sort of early.

-Richie

Japan Day 4

2010-03-09T21:30:00.001-05:00

Today was a total adventure day. I think Ann Marie probably enjoyed this day the most. First off, we had perfect weather. It was sunny and not too cold. We travelled to Miyajima Island. On the boat ride over to the island we were welcomed by a gigantic Torii gate that appeared to be floating on the water. It was an incredible sight. It is widely considered to be one of the 3 best sights in all of Japan.

The island itself was a lot of fun. There were free roaming deer that were very friendly, just chilling out with all the people. The streets were lined with gift shops and food stands. I sampled a lot of great stuff. The local favorite was a small maple leaf made of pancake batter filled with various creams. You could get chocoloate, red bean, grean tea, custard, blueberry, strawberry, etc... I call it the Japanese twinkie! They also had these steamed beef buns that were out of this world. We visited a shrine, a temple, and a pagoda. All amazing sights.

Next we we headed to the island's largest feature, Mount Misen. Along the base of the mountain, there were these small manicured paths and streams. We could have spent all day just exploring that. Scro headed off to Hiroshima while Ann Marie and I decided to take rope cars to the mountain top. The ride was great because you got a birds-eye view of the mountain and you see for miles in every direction. Once we reached the top there was a crazy hike to the very top of the mountain where there was a Buddhist temple and shrine with a flame that has been burning non stop for 1,200 years!

After that we headed to Hiroshima to join Scro. We got to see the peace memorial park. In the park is a building that has been preserved since the atomic bombing in 1945. It's hard to describe, so I suggest you do a google image search if you want to have a better idea of what it looks like.

Hiroshima was jumping at night. Everything was open and the town was out in full force. Unfortunately, we had a train to catch so we didn't get to spend too much time there. I did get to try the local food though. In the train station was a place that served Okonomiyaki which is considered to be Japanese pizza, and you can only get it in Hiroshima. Although it tastes nothing like pizza, it was delicious. It has a thin batter crust with noodles, bacon, cabbage, bean sprouts, egg, green onions and BBQ sauce. You can also add shrimp and other ingredients.

We also hit our first snag on the trip. Our train had a problem and was stopped in the middle of the track for 3 hours. Even though it was the end of the day, it did kill any night activities we had planned and is going to throw off our schedule for tomorrow. Hopefully, that will be the last glitch.

Tomorrow, we go to Tokyo!

-Richie

Japan Day 3

2010-03-03T20:27:00.000-05:00

We packed in a lot of stuff today since this was our last official Kyoto day.

We started off at the temple of the golden pavilion. It was an amazing sight. The temple was covered in gold leaf and surrounded by a pond with miniature islands in it. It also had a nice walking trail complete with streams.

Next we travelled to the opposite end of Kyoto and visited the temple of the silver pavilion. Although this wasn't silver, it was still very nice, and it was right near a mountain so we were able to get a spectacular view of Kyoto from up there.

From there we did a Frommer's walking tour which took us through the philosopher's stroll. It's a narrow pathway the runs along side a canal. There are a bunch of old style houses and shrines along the path. There were long stretches where we didn't see any cars, and it was almost hard to tell what year we were in.

Next we went to Nanzenji temple which looked like the openning scene of Rashomon. A lot of these older temples have such a huge epic feel, and they're so highly detailed that you can appreciate them from hundreds of feet away, or inches away.

After that we went back to Pontocho for some shopping and a small dinner which was made up of various chicken parts, and was a little weird for me. To finish of the evening we took a walk through the Gion district where we saw Maiko (Geisha in training) running around. We even got a peek at an actual Geisha entertaining a group of Japanese business men. We saw a short presentation of traditional Japanese arts at a theater in Gion, then we got Tea ceremony lessons. The Japanese green tea is intense. The color is so vivid and it tastes great.

Tomorrow we'll be taking a side trip, I don't have any details yet, but it should be interesting.

-Richie

Japan Day 2

2010-03-01T17:53:00.001-05:00

Today was action packed. We started off at Toei Movie Studio Park. It's a giant movie set where they film Samurai dramas for movies and TV. We even go to see them shoot a popular Japanese Samurai series. I couldn't resist it the urge, so I got a few Tiger's fang shots while we were there! I would have spent the entire day there if I could, but there was so much other stuff to do.

Next we went to the Fushimi Inari Shrine. This place seemed endless. There are thousands of giant orange Tori gates everywhere. The form these tunnels that wind up and down through a beautiful forest setting. It was pretty awesome.

On the way back we hit up a gigantic video arcade at the Nijo station. I watched Steve play BlazeBlue against a local, and he actually did pretty well. They had tons of wacky games here with interesting control scheme. They're way beyond the standard joystick.

We ate dinner at a Japanese steak house, then went to the Pontocho district which was insane. I couldn't even tell you how large it was because we didn't reach the end. There were main streets with shopping and karaoke. Then there were these funky alleys with bars, restaurants and other slightly seedy establishments. We ducked into the tiniest door into the tiniest alleyway. The door was so small and covered in stickers that we weren't even sure if it was a bar. We went in and joined 2 local women. They were very cool. They were teaching us Japanese. The bartender was also really cool. He asked us if we liked heavy metal and then put on this crazy hardcore Japanese stuff and everyone in this tiny bar was rocking out. It was awesome.

more to come later,

-Richie

Japan 1

2010-02-28T04:26:00.001-05:00

What a day! We started off by visiting Nijo castle. It was Shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa's Kyoto residence. The surrounding garden was breathtaking. I can't even do it justice if I try to describe it. The castle itself was really cool. The Shogun's security system was pretty awesome. The floors deliberately make noise when you walk on them. They're call nightingale floors because they squeak like birds. it actually works surprisingly well.

The Heian shrine was also a highlight. The garden was gorgeous. Each sectioned was a picturesque backdrop for a samurai movie. We felt like we were walking through a video game.

The most amazing part of the day was getting to sit in at an Iaido class in this giant budo hall attached to the Heian shrine. The sensei was incredible. He also gave us a quick sword lesson and even let Steve hold his sword! A local Japanese man who was translating for us told us what a rare honor this was. The sensei and all of his students were very friendly, but also very skilled and deadly. They wielded the swords as if they were weightless. It was beautiful to watch.

We're having no trouble getting around or communicating. The people here are very friendly. We were also lucky to have good weather all day.

There are lots of Tsunami warnings on the news, but think that's going to be hitting Kyoto, so there's no need to worry for the time being.

We're off to a sit on the floor kaiseki dinner now. I'll write again when I can,

-Richie

whatever

2010-02-06T03:37:00.000-05:00

This is the last day of my 20s. It's both awesome and awful at the same time. It's a strange feeling. Anyway, here's some stuff that's on my mind.

1. AT&T commercials. These are probably the worst commercials I've ever seen. As a verizon customer, they actual anger me and make me hate AT&T. Before, I had no hatred for them, I was just a customer of a different provider, now I hate them because they're telling me I'm stupid. I'm naive for believing that Verizon has better coverage. I'm uncool for using a droid instead of an iPhone, and I'm utterly crippled by the fact that I can't talk on the phone and surf on the web simultaneously. Now, I'm not really a Verizon fanboy, but these Luke Wilson commercials are really going to turn me into one. Whoever is coming up with these ads is ridiculous.

2. Downsizing. As my 30s approach, it's time to make a few changes to the gear situation. I having my rack with me on gigs, but after tonight's gig at the red lion, I think I really need to consider going a lot smaller. I'll keep the rack setup for gigs where I can actually get use out of it, but I need to rethink everything. I don't know if the answer is going back to a combo, or maybe doing something like a floor pod. I gotta make some changes. I'm tired of carrying all this crap with me. My current rig is 2 racks, 2 bags, and a cabinet. Other guys bring and amp and a guitar. I used to do that. It was cool, but I got caught up in effects and advanced switching. I actually have a lot of fun trying to nail the sounds I hear on records or in my head. It's probably my favorite thing about playing live. But tonight for example, my foot controller broke, and I couldn't do squat with my rig. It still sounded good, but I couldn't switch channels or add effects. It was just frustrating to think that I lugged all that gear around and I couldn't even really use it. I will be getting an alternate rig with smaller and lighter gear, very soon. When I figure out what that rig is, I will post it online.

3. Earplugs. I have ear plugs. I put them in my ears. I sing 2 notes and take them out. It's bad. I get really angry with myself for not keeping them in. On BOC gigs, I have in ear monitors. Those are amazing. They're like ear plugs with a little audio added inside for the stuff that the ear plugs cut out. I have a choice to make. Wear earplugs on every gig, or bring in ears to every gig. It seems like ear plugs are the inexpensive and sensible solution, but I'll probably end up using the in ears on every gig. I'm an idiot.

4. Star Trek Online. Ann Marie got me Star Trek Online. It's a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG.) I used to play these kinds of games a lot, but I stopped when I realized it was getting out of hand. After a day of playing this game, I have that fuzzy feeling like someone just draped a warm and soft blanket over you. I swear that these MMORPGs stimulate a different part of the brain than other games. I can play Grand Theft Auto for an hour and be satisfied, but this game is different. After 4 hours of an MMORPG, you just want to play more and more. They are definitely addicting. My dad plays an MMORPG for at least 6 hours a day, every day.

Going to bed now.

good night,

-Richie

Saturday in Staten Island

2010-01-25T13:16:00.000-05:00

I had a great time on Saturday. We played a Hit Me With It gig at the Dugout in Staten Island. It was Ann Marie Nacchio, Andy Ascolese, Chris Kuffner and me. It was great to hear Chris play again. We had a lot of fun.

I know that lately, Staten Island has been the punchline of every east coast guido joke in mainstream media, but I gotta say that I definitely saw another side of my beloved hometown on Saturday. It was getting late and I looked out into crowd and saw nothing but talented people. Every person in the audience was a badass. We were playing the song "I Wish" by Stevie Wonder and we were jamming on the Ebm7 to Ab7. Chris just played a fantastic bass solo and then I decided to try a little audience participation. I had a wireless on my guitar. I went out into the crowd, and started handing the guitar around. Everyone who played took a great solo. Not good...great. No one did a few stock licks, they were all hitting chord tones while playing amazing rhythmic stuff. I just thought to myself, "Where else can this happen?" Sure, Staten Island has its fair share of Jersey Shore cast members, (I have no problem with them) but it also has a wealth of great talent, and that often gets overshadowed by the stereotypes. This isn't a complaint, it's an observation.

By the way, I'm now referring to my belly as "The Situation." Time to fill "The Situation" with some pizza.

-Richie

NAMM Day 4

2010-01-17T22:29:00.001-05:00

I heard Rivera amps today. I thought they were very good. To my ears it sounded like a fender with modern attitude. The EQ worked well and there was plenty of gain.

I checked out Melodyne again. It was supposed to be released around the last NAMM show but it just came out in November, so I guess it still counts a new product. Melodyne is mind blowing! You can edit polyphonic audio files. If you play a chord on guitar, you can edit the individual notes of the chord. You can edit time pitch and vibrato. It's awesome.

I saw a neat double bass drum pedal called Dualist. It's one pedal that has 2 beaters. When you release the pedal the 2nd beater hits. Sure, it's like cheating, but I'm a crappy drummer and have no problem cheating.

I looked at a small 8 input soundcraft mixer that looked good. It was surprisingly small considering the amount of features it has. It looks like it might be a good move for live pa on a bar gig.

I wish I could write something about guitars, but I feel like most of the guitars I looked at were way overpriced. I don't really feel comfortable paying over 3 grand for a guitar, so I don't think I'll mention those companies, even though they had some nice stuff. I did order another music man. You can beat their quality and price.

I had a very good show overall. I got hooked up with some great companies and I can honestly say that I've never seen so many giant breasts in one place in my entire life! It was very hard to stay focused, but I was able to work through it.

-Richie

NAMM Day 3

2010-01-17T02:38:00.001-05:00

I listened to a lot of amps today. The 1 watt Bugera was pretty cool. It sounded like a loud amp but at a low volume.

Blackstar amps were also really good sounding. They had a great tonal quality, and nice gain.

I went back to ENGL for the 9th time today and tried out their 1 rack space tube preamp. It was amazing like everything else they make. I spoke to the guys from the company, and I have a feeling that I will soon be an ENGL endorsee.

Voodoo labs makes a box that will use midi program changes to switch channels or any other 1/4 inch relay switch. It's awesome.

I played a cool bass ukulele that was one of the most fun instruments to play.

Peterson has a guitar (and a bass) to midi box that is monophonic. It's very small and works well.

I was invited to play at a jam tonight with Chris Slade, Alan White, Liberty Devito, Jimy Sohns, and more. It was a lot of fun.

-Richie

NAMM day 2

2010-01-16T04:41:00.001-05:00

I spent most of the day rehearsing for Icons of Rock Jam, but I did get a little browsing in.

Jamlink is a little box that allows you jam with other musicians over the internet in real time. I jammed with someone in San Francisco while I was 400 miles away in Anaheim. There was a slight latency, but it wasn't enough to be disruptive. Supposedly, you can link up with relatively low latency up to 500 miles away. It was pretty cool, and opens up some interesting possibilities.

I played a funky Lakland bass with a short scale. It had a crazy retro look to it and played really well.

I saw an amazing presentation by Rudy Sarzo on how to make 3d videos in Sony Vegas. It's really easy to do and I plan on experimenting with it when I get home.

More to come tomorrow!
-Richie

NAMM Day 1

2010-01-14T23:04:00.001-05:00

I saw a lot of cool stuff today. As usual, I was most impressed by TC electronic. Their new polyphonic tuner pedal is great. You strum all of your strings at once and it gives you 6 LEDs that meter all 6 strings simultaneously. Awesome. Their nova delay pedal is also amazing.

Engl amps are fucking amazing. I need to get one. It's not capabable of getting a bad sound. All their stuff is also midi controllable which I love! I loved their 4 channel head and the combo too.

Music Man had a good showing. The dual humbucker Albert Lee is really nice. It sounds great. I really like the new 5 string Big Al bass. It has guitar-player friendly string spacing. If I was doing more bass gigs, I'd probably jump at it. I got my eye on a few things from Music Man.

The new soft synth player from Muse is really nice. I think I will have to convince BOC to buy it. It holds software plugins and it's only about the size of a lunch box. Very cool.

I'm a bit jetlagged, and overwhelmed from the first day, so I'm having a little trouble remembering some of the stuff I saw.

More to come tomorrow,
-Richie

Droid Fixes & Apps

2009-12-26T14:53:00.001-05:00

Today I'm going to do a tech blog for Motorola Droid people.

I've had the Motorola Droid for over a month now. I'm very happy with it. We've just had an over the air update. I was hoping it was going to fix some of the problems, but I didn't really notice any huge differences. Here is my list of droid issues that I think should be addressed in the next update. I'm hoping that someone who can actually do something about this will read this list.

1. Copy & Paste - This is by far the most irritating feature. There needs to be an easier way to do this. 3rd party apps have it down, but the android OS doesn't. The e-mail app and the browser app have different methods for copy & paste and both are cumbersome. There needs to be a universal copy & paste method and it needs to be as simple as a long press and slide like every other touch screen device.

2. E-mail zoom - I have no trouble reading e-mails, but friends of mine who are droid users have complained that there is no zoom in the e-mail app. In all honesty, there is no reason why there shouldn't be a zoom here.

3. Video zoom - As big and bright as the screen is, I would still like to see a feature to either zoom or stretch (or both) video. My 5 year old ipod has this feature, why doesn't the droid have it? On a hand held device, I don't want to see any black bars while watching video.

4. Horizontal On Screen Keyboard Glitch - Sometimes the horizontal keyboard doesn't display text as your typing.

5. Auto Quit - I think a way to automatically quit apps should be added with user control. I just think that sometimes apps run in the background when they don't need to and this drains the battery. I think it would be cool if you were able to tell the droid how long each app should idle for automatically quitting.

6. E-mail Glitch - My e-mail frequently stops auto refreshing.

7. Notifications - Notifications are a strong point on this phone, but I think it would be better if you could set individual ring tones for different types of notifications. I think text messages, voice mails, updates, and other notifications should all have ringtone options.

8. Faster Load on Camera App - I think there should be an option to keep the camera app running in the background so you can load it faster. I find myself missing a lot of good photo ops waiting for the camera to come up.

9. Droid Market sorting options - For a relatively new OS, the android market has a large number of apps. However, finding the app you want is an overwhelming task because there is no advanced search or sorting options on the droid market. I think you should be able to sort by price, rating, release, etc...

10. Keyboard - The vertical on screen keyboard is very cramped and almost impossible to type on accurately. I think they need to make the keys a little smaller and have dead spaces in between them to prevent typos.

11. Visual Voice Mail and WiFi - Visual Voicemail doesn't work while you're on a WiFi network. This seems like a silly problem.

12. Google Earth - There is no Google Earth app for this phone. Let me rephrase that. Google Earth doesn't work on the Google Phone. Can we please fix this?

13. Microphone - My biggest problem with the phone is the microphone's directionality. Unless I'm talking directly into the phone, no one can hear me. When I'm in the car on speaker phone, it works fine. I can whisper in a noisy car and people can hear what I'm saying, but when I hold the phone up to my face, it sounds like I'm mumbling unless I can consistently hold the phone in the sweet spot. I don't know if this can be fixed in the update, but it would be great if the microphone didn't have such hardcore off axis rejection.

14. Multi-touch gestures - I have apps on my phone right now that use pinch zoom. This should be a standard feature in the OS. There is no satisfactory reason for it's absence. I've heard rumors that Verizon crippled this feature to give customers a reason to buy the Eris, but that just sounds like bad business to me. There is no good reason to cripple the best device that you offer.

So that's my list of suggested fixes. Now here's a list of apps that droid users should download from the market. Most of these are Free:

1. Xscope Browser - This is a basic browser, but it gives you a multi-touch pinch zoom. It's slower than the regular browser, but it will satisfly your iphone jones. Dolphin browser is also a good multitouch app.

2. Advanced Taskill - This tells you what programs are currently running and lets you quickly quit them. This will save your battery life and free up memory.

3. Explorer by Speed Software - Since the droid has no file explorer, you're going to need this to view the contents of your internal memory and SD card.

4. To Do List by Makeraman - A simple to do list to replaced my task list from my old windows mobile phone.

5. Notes by Yuli - This is also a simple app that is just a notepad. I use it quite a bit.

6. Talk to me Keyboard by pwn with your phone - This lets you speak into your phone and it converts your speech to text. It's useful for doing verbal replies to text messages.

7. Droid LED Flashlight - This uses the droid's flash as a flash light.

8. Pandora - This is awesome. It streams music to your phone and it sounds amazing and you can customize what you listen to.

9. Documents To Go by DataViz - This is basically MS Office for your phone. Comes with a word program, excel, power point, and pdf.

10. Fandango - Check out movie times, buy tickets, and watch trailers

Big gig coming up

2009-12-15T16:45:00.001-05:00

I know this is a last minute thing, but I'm playing a gig this friday (december 18th) with a killer line up. On drums we have Jules Radino from Blue Oyster Cult. Jules joined BOC around the same time that I joined. He's a fantastic drummer with a great feel. On bass will be Danny Miranda. Danny was also a member of Blue Oyster Cult, but most recently he was the bass player for the hugely successful Queen + Paul Rodgers world tour. You heard right...Queen...my freakin' favorite band! Danny is one of the heaviest bass players I've ever heard. We we will be joined by lovely and talented Ann Marie Nacchio on vocals, and the equally lovely and talented Andy Ascolese on keyboards.

I just got the call for this gig last week and I was lucky enough to be able to get Jules and Danny to play on it. I'm also working on getting some more special guests to come up and jam with us. I'm looking forward to playing this show and I think it will be a lot of fun. It's at Rhythm & Brews (1674 Richmond Rd. Staten Island, NY) at 10:30 pm on Friday the 18th of December. Make sure you come out to this show!

Here's some news about my thursday live karaoke gig. Unfortunately, it's been cancelled. We may try it again at a later date, but for now, there will be no more thursday night live karaoke with Sleeve of Wizard.

I'm also looking for other places to bring MorningStarlett. Any ideas?

-Richie

What a show tonight!

2009-11-29T04:31:00.000-05:00

I just played a show with my cover band, Hit Me With It at a great bar/restaurant called the Dugout pub. I wasn't really expecting the show to be anything special for various reasons, but the show ended up being extraordinary. I thought the band sounded very good, but it was the audience who made the show great. We had great guests come up and jam, plus a lot of dancers in the audience. We also had a super cool group of people from Tokyo tear it up on some Stray Cats. It was freakin' awesome. I had so much fun tonight, I almost forgot that it was a gig!

Thanks to everyone who showed up!

Now on another note, these are my current favorite things:

Dragon Age Origins
Californication
Arizona Arnold Palmer Lite
Pandora Radio
Paul Gilbert Intense Rock
Ninja Assassin
John Woo's Red Cliff
The Big Bang Theory

-Richie

Hit Me With It and Klingons.

2009-11-25T03:18:00.001-05:00

We had Hit Me With It rehearsal today. As usual it was a marathon rehearsal where we went over 30+ songs. We're playing at the dugout pub on saturday night in Staten Island. If you haven't seen us recently, we're playing with Rob Kipp on keys and Phil Magallanes on bass. Phil is moving to Florida soon so this will be his last show with us. If you've never heard Phil play, make sure you get to hear this amazing musician live in person while you still can!

In other news, I must clear up something that my friend Damian brought up today while watching the new Star Trek movie. He made a comment about how all alien races in Star Trek look like humans with only minor variations. I feel the need to explain this for all the non- trekkies who are curious...

In Star Trek lore, all of the humanoid races are decendants of one race. This ancient race of people developed space travel long before the dawn of 'istory and populated various planets. Through evolution, each group adapted to its planet's conditions over the millenia. This is why all humanoid species look slightly different.

I hope that this clears up this very important matter for you.

-Richie

Testing out the new blog

2009-11-23T13:41:00.001-05:00

I'm trying to see how this works from the phone.

-Richie

New Blog, New Calendar

2009-11-23T12:12:00.000-05:00

In my onging effort to get better at the internet, I've been making a few changes on my site. I hope these changes are for the better.

First, I switched to a google calendar. This allows me to change all my dates from one place. I can change gig information on my phone and it automatically changes on my website and on facebook. This is a huge time saver and is far less tedious than the previous method I was using.

I'm also trying to find away to make blogging a little easier. This is my first attempt, and hopefully it shows up in all the right places.

-Richie